Regional poverty and infection disease: early exploratory evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic

Abu Bakkar Siddique (), Kingsley E. Haynes (), Rajendra Kulkarni and Meng-Hao Li
Additional contact information
Abu Bakkar Siddique: George Mason University
Kingsley E. Haynes: George Mason University
Rajendra Kulkarni: George Mason University
Meng-Hao Li: George Mason University

The Annals of Regional Science, 2023, vol. 70, issue 1, No 12, 209-236

Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the role of regional poverty on the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA. It also explores how the effects differ with the concentration of ethnic minorities. We find that poverty is a significant and consistent determinant of higher COVID-19 infections and fatalities. Prevalent poverty areas experienced higher infections due to economic structure that require hypermobility (high mobility and interpersonal interaction)—more physical human to human contact resulting in higher deaths from limited access to health services. These are also regions where minority groups are concentrated. Disproportionate infections and fatalities occurred within the black, Hispanic, and Asian population. Our evidence is robust to state fixed effects that capture local COVID-19 mitigation policies, multi-level hierarchical modeling, spatial autoregressive assessment, and large sets of county-level health, social, and economic factors. This paper contributes to the literature on health and economic disparities and their resulting consequences for infectious diseases.

JEL-codes: C31 I14 I30 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00168-022-01109-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:anresc:v:70:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s00168-022-01109-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://link.springer.com/journal/168

DOI: 10.1007/s00168-022-01109-x

Access Statistics for this article

The Annals of Regional Science is currently edited by Martin Andersson, E. Kim and Janet E. Kohlhase

More articles in The Annals of Regional Science from Springer, Western Regional Science Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().