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As COVID-19 case rates reach new heights nationwide, many states and cities are tightening stay restrictions to stop the spread. New research suggests that those suffering from financial hardship are less likely to comply with the new home stay orders; however, these same US residents would be more likely to adhere to the new public health guidelines if their families received stimulus funds.
The results, published in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, suggest that of the measures taken to address the economic displacement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the CARES Act has helped reduce an important source of viral spread: social interaction.
In the new paper, researchers from the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy and the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy sought to accurately measure the public’s willingness to abide by shelter ordinances first introduced in the spring of 2020..
The researchers looked at large numbers of geo-located cell phone usage patterns. The data, provided by the analysis firm UNACAST, estimates information such as the number of people living in a home, the average time spent at home or away, and changes in the average distance traveled by a user. This information helped researchers assess compliance with stay-at-home orders.
To determine how economic conditions determine compliance, the researchers compared cell phone data to county records containing the average household incomes for each county in the United States from February to July 2020. They also took other factors into account. which could affect the willingness of county residents to respect, including how badly each county has been affected by the virus, levels of unemployment, population density, partisanship and where residents get their news.
Counties with a higher median income comply with on-site shelter policies by reducing movement by an additional 60% compared to before the policies were introduced; however, compliance with on-site shelter orders in counties where median income is below the median is patchy at best.
“Unsurprisingly, poor communities exposed to economic displacement are the least likely to comply with on-site shelter policies,” said co-author Jesse Driscoll, associate professor of political science at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy. “The data showed that working-class families – especially those who had lost their jobs or who might have lost them soon – were overall much less likely to stay home, as they had to leave home to work. Urgent public policy underway this winter is whether these behaviors changed when stimulus checks came last. “
To assess how stimulus controls under the $ 2.2 trillion CARES Act, passed in March 2020, impacted compliance, the researchers used the same cellphone movement data to determine whether household income increases behavior when multiple residents. of one county have started receiving stimulus payments.
While some beneficiaries received their checks weeks earlier than others, the team was able to measure the impact stimulus dollars had on residents from data of recipients who used an electronic banking service to deposit funds, made available from the financial data company Facteus.
The researchers found that injections of local stimuli significantly increased social distances. For every additional dollar per capita a county receives, the movement has temporarily decreased by more than 1%.
“As the counties received more stimulus funds, their residents stayed at home longer,” the authors write. “When they got out, people in counties where most had received stimulus checks traveled less than people in counties where most checks hadn’t arrived yet.”
The authors conclude: “Targeted economic aid such as direct stimulus transfers and higher unemployment benefits may have a potential limited spread of COVID-19 among economically disadvantaged populations.”
Co-authors of the paper “Poverty and Economic Dislocation Reduce Compliance with the COVID-19 Shelter-in-Place Protocol,” include Konstantin Sonin, Austin L. Wright of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and Jarnickae Wilson by JP Morgan.
Source of the story:
Materials provided by University of California – San Diego. Original written by Christine Clark. Note: The content can be changed by style and length.
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