Socioeconomic Status as a Risk Factor in Economic and Physical Harm from COVID-19: Evidence from the United States

Jonathan Rothwell and Ember Smith

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2021, vol. 698, issue 1, 12-38

Abstract: We provide an empirical summary of the relationship between socioeconomic status and the economic and disease burden of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic in the United States. We rely on large-scale public data, including a zip code database we constructed from public records, to investigate the relationship between socioeconomic status and the risk of economic harm, COVID-19 infection, or COVID-19-related death. We find that low levels of education and income are associated with 1.3 to 2 times higher risk of economic harm and 2 to 3 times greater physical harm. Education and income have a similar effect size to racial and ethnic disparities, with many Americans of color facing worse outcomes. Using Gallup data to investigate potential mechanisms, we find that socioeconomic status is not related to preventative behavior like mask use but is related to occupation-related exposure, which puts lower-socioeconomic-status households at risk.

Keywords: COVID-19; socioeconomic status; inequality; social determinants of health; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00027162211062137 (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:sae:anname:v:698:y:2021:i:1:p:12-38

DOI: 10.1177/00027162211062137

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().