Racial Disparities in COVID-19 Case Positivity and Social Context: The Role of Housing, Neighborhood, and Health Insurance

Warren Lowell, Sarah Dickerson, Anna Gassman-Pines, Elizabeth Gifford and Marcos Rangel

Housing Policy Debate, 2024, vol. 34, issue 4, 443-468

Abstract: Research on racial-ethnic COVID-19 disparities has yet to employ housing variables measured at the individual level, limiting our understanding of housing’s role in determining early exposure to the virus. To address this gap, we linked data from SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests within the Duke University Health System between March 12, 2020, and July 31, 2020 (N = 23,057 individuals), with housing parcel data. We then analyzed how housing, neighborhood, and health insurance explain disparities in case positivity between and within racial-ethnic groups in Durham County, North Carolina. We find that 55% of the Black–White disparity and 25% of the Hispanic–White disparity in positive cases are explained by these social-contextual variables. Neighborhood-fixed effects explained the largest portion (27%) of the Black–White disparity, whereas health insurance type explained the largest portion (14%) of the Hispanic–White disparity. We conclude that housing, neighborhood, and health insurance had a significant role in producing racial-ethnic disparities in COVID-19 case positivity.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10511482.2022.2104336 (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:houspd:v:34:y:2024:i:4:p:443-468

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RHPD20

DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2022.2104336

Access Statistics for this article

Housing Policy Debate is currently edited by Tom Sanchez, Susanne Viscarra and Derek Hyra

More articles in Housing Policy Debate from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().