Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has had tremendous impact on Americans’ lives including their personal and social behaviors. While people of all ages are affected in some way by the pandemic, older persons have been far more likely to suffer the most severe health consequences. For this reason, how people have responded to mitigating behaviors to COVID-19 may differ by age. Using a nationally representative sample from the longitudinal data of the Understanding America Study (UAS), we examined differentials in behavioral responses to COVID-19 by age and how they changed over the first three months of the pandemic. Behavioral responses and changes in behavior over time differed by age, type of behaviors and time reference. At the beginning of the pandemic (March, 2020), older and younger people were similar in their likelihood of engaging in preventive personal behaviors when controlling for other influences. As the pandemic progressed, however, older people adopted mitigating personal behavioral changes more than younger people, such that about 1–2 months after the pandemic started, older people were more likely to comply with suggested behaviors and regulations including practicing better hygiene, quarantining, and social distancing. One month into the pandemic, older people were less likely than younger people to engage in two of four risky behaviors. The change in risky behavior over time did not differ by age; but both younger and older people were more likely to engage in risky behaviors after two months. Being female, a member of a racial/ethnic minority group, higher socioeconomic status, having more COVID-19 cases in one’s state of residence, a higher perceived risk for infection and dying, and a more left-leaning political orientation were related to adopting more pandemic mitigating behaviors.
Highlights
As the COVID-19 pandemic has spread across America, dramatic change has occurred in many aspects of personal and social life
Our study shows that the behavioral responses to COVID-19 differed by age and that over time the changes by age depended on the type of behaviors
When the pandemic began in March, older people did not differ from younger ones in taking preventive personal behaviors
Summary
As the COVID-19 pandemic has spread across America, dramatic change has occurred in many aspects of personal and social life. Quarantine and social distancing have been mandated in many states to prevent and reduce further spread of COVID-19. How does age affect personal and social reactions to COVID-19 have peaked in some places, in others it continues unabated or is still increasing. Public health practices including household-based quarantine, avoiding social interactions at close distance, avoiding crowds, washing hands, wearing a mask and identification and isolation of cases are the recommended approaches to reducing the number of cases infected by this highly contagious virus [1], and controlling the spread of the virus [2]. Older people may be more conscientious and more cautious about recommended health practices because the consequences of unhealthy practices may be more severe and fatal [4]; while younger people may not suffer fatal consequences of unhealthy choices [7]
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