Urban poverty and the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic : evidence from American cities

Abstract

This article investigates empirically whether urban poverty in American cities has affected the spread of COVID-19 at the early onset of the pandemic and whether such an effect was mitigated or amplified by mobility restriction policies. Using ACS data combined with data on mobility and confirmed cases, and after addressing bias arising from measurement error and unobserved confounders, we find that an increase in urban poverty is associated with a rise in COVID-19 cases. Stay-at-home orders are found to be ineffective and instead reinforce the speed of contagion in cities where poverty is less evenly distributed across neighborhoods.