God is in the rain: The impact of rainfall-induced early social distancing on COVID-19 outbreaks

Ajay Shenoy, Bhavyaa Sharma, Guanghong Xu, Rolly Kapoor, Haedong Aiden Rho and Kinpritma Sangha

Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz

Abstract: We measure the benefit to society created by preventing COVID-19 deaths through a marginal increase in early social distancing. We exploit county-level rainfall on the last weekend before statewide lockdown in the early phase of the pandemic. After controlling for historical rainfall, temperature, and state fixed-effects, current rainfall is a plausibly exogenous instrument for social distancing. A one percent decrease in the population leaving home on the weekend before lockdown creates an average of 132 dollars of benefit per county resident within 2 weeks. The impacts of earlier distancing compound over time and mainly arise from lowering the risk of a major outbreak, yielding large but unevenly distributed social benefit.

Keywords: Economics; Policy and Administration; Applied Economics; Human Society; Prevention; COVID-19; Communicable Disease Control; Disease Outbreaks; Humans; Physical Distancing; Rain; SARS-CoV-2; Coronavirus; Social distancing; Rainfall; coronavirus; social distancing; rainfall; Public Health and Health Services; Econometrics; Health Policy & Services; Applied economics; Policy and administration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-his
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Journal Article: God is in the rain: The impact of rainfall-induced early social distancing on COVID-19 outbreaks (2022)
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