Does the COVID-19 Pandemic Change Human Mobility Equally Worldwide? Cross-Country Cluster Analysis

Katarzyna Czech, Anna Davy and Michał Wielechowski
Additional contact information
Katarzyna Czech: Department of Econometrics and Statistics, Institute of Economics and Finance, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Nowoursynowska 166, 02-787 Warsaw, Poland
Anna Davy: My Data Lab, 05-816 Michałowice, Poland
Michał Wielechowski: Department of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economics and Finance, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Nowoursynowska 166, 02-787 Warsaw, Poland

Economies, 2021, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: The paper aims to identify groups of countries characterised by a similar human mobility reaction to COVID-19 and investigate whether the differences between distinguished clusters result from the stringency of government anti-COVID-19 policy or are linked to another macroeconomic factor. We study how COVID-19 affects human mobility patterns, employing daily data of 124 countries. The analysis is conducted for the first and second waves of the novel coronavirus pandemic separately. We group the countries into four clusters in terms of stringency level of government anti-COVID-19 policy and six mobility categories, using k-means clustering. Moreover, by applying the Kruskal–Wallis test and Wilcoxon rank-sum pairwise comparison test, we assess the existence of significant differences between the distinguished clusters. We confirm that the pandemic has caused significant human mobility changes. The study shows that a more stringent anti-COVID-19 policy is related to the greater decline in mobility. Moreover, we reveal that COVID-19-driven mobility changes are also triggered by other factors not related to the pandemic. We find the Human Development Index (HDI) and its components as driving factors of the magnitude of mobility changes during COVID-19. The greater human mobility reaction to COVID-19 refers to the country groups representing higher HDI levels.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; human mobility; stringency of government anti-COVID-19 policy; Human Development Index (HDI); k-means clustering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E F I J O Q (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/9/4/182/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/9/4/182/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jecomi:v:9:y:2021:i:4:p:182-:d:681125

Access Statistics for this article

Economies is currently edited by Ms. Hongyan Zhang

More articles in Economies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().