Socioeconomic Disparities in the Effects of Pollution on Spread of Covid-19: Evidence from US Counties

Abstract

This paper explores disparities in the effect of pollution on confirmed cases of Covid-19 based on counties’ socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Using data on all US counties on a daily basis over the year 2020 and applying a rich panel data fixed effect model, we document that: 1) there are discernible social and demographic disparities in the spread of Covid-19. Blacks, low educated, and poorer people are at higher risks of being infected by the new disease. 2) The criteria pollutants including Ozone, CO, PM10, and PM2.5 have the potential to accelerate the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. 3) The disadvantaged population is more vulnerable to the effects of pollution on the spread of coronavirus. Specifically, the effects of pollution on confirmed cases become larger for blacks, low educated, and counties with lower average wages in 2019.

PM2.5 as a major predictor of COVID-19 basic reproduction number in the USA

“…Taken together, we believe that the results presented here establish the link of PM2.5 pollution with COVID19 transmissibility much more firmly. Previous studies on the USA obtained non-consistent reports on pollution importance, underlying importance of more extensive modeling and statistical learning approaches that we employed here (Allen et al, 2021;Gupta and Gharehgozli, 2020;Luo et al, 2021).…”

Model-Estimated Association Between Simulated US Elementary School–Related SARS-CoV-2 Transmission, Mitigation Interventions, and Vaccine Coverage Across Local Incidence Levels

“…Masks are physiologically safe, but there is limited data on the impact of mask-wearing on learning and social and emotional development, especially for younger children, students with special learning needs, and English language learners . With the availability of vaccines for all US residents aged 5 years and older, many public health experts have called for “off-ramps” and “on-ramps” that use available public health data to inform decisions about when to remove or reinstate masking and other mitigation measures …”