The Geographic Spread of COVID-19 Correlates with the Structure of Social Networks as Measured by Facebook

Theresa Kuchler, Dominic Russel and Johannes Stroebel

No 26990, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We use aggregated data from Facebook to show that COVID-19 was more likely to spread between regions with stronger social network connections. Areas with more social ties to two early COVID-19 “hotspots” (Westchester County, NY, in the U.S. and Lodi province in Italy) generally had more confirmed COVID-19 cases as of the end of March. These relationships hold after controlling for geographic distance to the hotspots as well as for the income and population densities of the regions. As the pandemic progressed in the U.S., a county's social proximity to recent COVID- 19 cases predicts future outbreaks over and above physical proximity. These results suggest data from online social networks can be useful to epidemiologists and others hoping to forecast the spread of communicable diseases such as COVID-19.

JEL-codes: I0 R0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-net, nep-pay, nep-soc and nep-ure
Note: CF EFG EH ITI PE POL
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (86)

Published as Theresa Kuchler & Dominic Russel & Johannes Stroebel, 2021. "JUE Insight: The geographic spread of COVID-19 correlates with the structure of social networks as measured by Facebook," Journal of Urban Economics, .

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Working Paper: The Geographic Spread of Covid-19 Correlates with Structure of Social Networks as Measured by Facebook (2020)
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