Abstract
Among the many striking features of the COVID 19 pandemic is the geographic heterogeneity of its incidence and its disproportionate effects on low income people. We examine links between individual risk and COVID 19 outcomes in the federal context in Mexico characterized by high socioeconomic and political heterogeneity. Using highly detailed individual mobility data for five Mexican cities, we document the relationship between local income and education factors and the behaviors associated with COVID 19 risk after the national lockdown: staying home, going to work, and going other places. While low income people are disproportionately likely to contract COVID 19 and die from illnesses associated with COVID 19 in Mexico, we find very mixed evidence that people living in low income urban census blocs are engaging in observably riskier behaviors. Both before and after the national lockdown, people in low income locations spend more time at home and less time going other places, suggesting a lower overall risk of contracting the virus based on voluntary movement. However, people in low income and less educated places appear to shift their movement less in response to Mexico’s national lockdown. Less educated people, in particular, show much less change in their movement patterns in response to the lockdown. At the same time, we find enormous variance between cities and in some cities such as Mexico City and Ecatepec people in low income places changed their behavior more after the lockdown. Understanding the reasons for these income and education differences in outcomes is crucial for policy responses–whether the government should focus on educating individuals about their behavior, or whether the response requires a much more difficult overhaul of societal protections.
Highlights
COVID 19 has laid bare the critical importance of inequality in the lives of citizens in the Americas
If we find that low income or less educated people are not more likely to engage in risky behaviors, their disproportionate cases and case fatality rate may be driven by other, likely structural, factors that make low income people with less health care access more vulnerable
Unlike other scholars that focus exclusively on time spent at home as a measure of COVID 19 risk (Huang et al, 2020), we examine the full range of movement–home, work, and other locations
Summary
COVID 19 has laid bare the critical importance of inequality in the lives of citizens in the Americas. In the large federations of the region, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, it is the nations’ working classes and economically vulnerable populations that have disproportionately suffered in the pandemic, economically and physically It has not been the poorest countries of the world that have had the most difficulty managing the pandemic (at least so far), it has been economically unequal countries, high inequality federal systems, that have experienced elevated case levels and case fatality rates. Most attention to COVID 19 risk has emphasized the role of individual behaviors–whether people are exposing themselves to risk unnecessarily In these assessments, it may be individual decision-making that is driving income- and education-based variation in COVID 19 outcomes, i.e., that poorer and less educated individuals are putting themselves at greater risk. We treat going to “other” non-home and nonwork locations as “voluntary” movement that is a reasonable indicator of risk-taking in the pandemic. If we find that low income or less educated people are not more likely to engage in risky behaviors, their disproportionate cases and case fatality rate may be driven by other, likely structural, factors that make low income people with less health care access more vulnerable
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