COVID: everything is better when everything is worse? A comparative analysis of testing, death rate and life expectancy across Italian regions

Gianpiero Torrisi

Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2020, vol. 7, issue 1, 463-475

Abstract: The effects of, and response to, COVID-19 are uneven both globally and locally. This paper adopts a regional perspective considering the link between life expectancy – as a proxy for the quality of the national health system – and the distribution of both tests for COVID-19 and death rates across Italian regions. Expectedly, a positive link between life expectancy and diagnostic effort is detected. However, a rather counterintuitive positive link is also found between the death rate and life expectancy. Nonetheless, the latter is broadly not statistically significant. These results, while calling for further research, cast doubts on the main drivers of the observed regional patterns.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1080/21681376.2020.1832908

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