COVID-19 and beyond: economic outcomes in Republican vs. Democratic States

Dan Rickman and Hongbo Wang

Applied Economics, 2025, vol. 57, issue 48, 7921-7940

Abstract: The policy responses by state and local governments and reactions by individuals to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic were wide-ranging across the US, often falling along the nation’s political divide. We examine whether Republican states performed better economically, both during the year of the COVID-19 recession and the two years following the recession. We find stronger employment and population growth and smaller increases in unemployment during the COVID-19 recession year in Republican states, though we also find lower per capita income and productivity growth in Republican states during the year of the COVID-19 recession. The employment growth and unemployment advantage in Republican states dissipated during the recovery from the COVID-19 recession such that there was not any longer-term advantage. We compare the COVID-19 and Great Recession years and the periods preceding each recession. The population growth advantage in Republican states during the COVID-19 recession was evident in all expansionary and recessionary periods beginning in 2003, suggesting that the growth advantage was not related to different responses to COVID-19. We conclude that there was not a clear overall economic benefit to the less restrictive COVID-19 policies and lower virus avoidance by individuals in Republican states, particularly in the longer run.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2024.2394696 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:applec:v:57:y:2025:i:48:p:7921-7940

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2024.2394696

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().