Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence has accumulated that movement restrictions enacted to combat virus spread produce disparate consequences along socioeconomic lines. We investigate the hypothesis that people engaged in financially secure employment are better able to adhere to mobility restrictions, due to occupational factors that link the capacity for flexible work arrangements to income security. We use high-resolution spatial data on household internet traffic as a surrogate for adaptation to home-based work, together with the geographical clustering of occupation types, to investigate the relationship between occupational factors and increased internet traffic during work hours under lockdown in two Australian cities. By testing our hypothesis based on the observed trends, and exploring demographic factors associated with divergences from our hypothesis, we are left with a picture of unequal impact dominated by two major influences: the types of occupations in which people are engaged, and the composition of households and families. During lockdown, increased internet traffic was correlated with income security and, when school activity was conducted remotely, to the proportion of families with children. Our findings suggest that response planning and provision of social and economic support for residents within lockdown areas should explicitly account for income security and household structure. Overall, the results we present contribute to the emerging picture of the impacts of COVID-19 on human behaviour, and will help policy makers to understand the balance between public health and social impact in making decisions about mitigation policies.
Highlights
During the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence has accumulated that movement restrictions enacted to combat virus spread produce disparate consequences along socioeconomic lines
Our results support the hypothesis that occupational factors link the ability to work from home with income security, and clearly show how this link produces strong positive correlations between income security and increased home internet activity during COVID-19 restrictions
Our analysis focused on the urban areas of Sydney and Melbourne during a pre-COVID period, during the first pandemic wave in March and April 2020, and during the second wave from July 2020
Summary
During the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence has accumulated that movement restrictions enacted to combat virus spread produce disparate consequences along socioeconomic lines. To help ensure compliance with these policies, and to dampen their short-term economic impact, the Australian government in early 2020 implemented social assistance programs, including the temporary COVID Supplementary payment for the unemployed (JobSeeker), the JobKeeper wage subsidy, early access to superannuation (retirement) accounts, and targeted support for severely affected sectors[2,3] These measures cannot be maintained indefinitely, and the protracted COVID-19 pandemic may outlast Australia’s ability to continue providing the high levels of economic support that helped ensure compliance with restrictions. The confluence of occupational and financial constraints place many such workers at a greater risk of exposure to infectious disease, either through the occupational hazard of close social interactions, or because without adequate leave or income entitlements, they have a limited ability to remain at home when unwell[6,8,9] This conflict between household economic needs and public health orders to stay at home is problematic for the success of such mitigation strategies. While mobility data can tell us who is staying home and where people are going when they leave the home, internet volume data provides a unique perspective on what is happening within households, in relation to adapting work arrangements to COVID-19 lockdown requirements
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