Relating socioeconomic position (SEP) and vaccination with Covid-19 rates in select populations

Abstract

In the COVID-19 pandemic, the world saw countless communities negatively impacted, and low-income communities were the most affected by the disease (29). In this study, we aimed to investigate and identify the relationship between key socioeconomic factors, COVID-19 infection rate, and vaccination, with hopes to apply this research to support low-income communities that are at a higher risk of infection. We hypothesized that there is a negative correlation between COVID-19 infection rate and positive economic factors such as per-capita GDP, and that there is a positive correlation between vaccination rates and similar factors. In our model for both infection rate and vaccination, we observed that although a negative relationship for some factors did exist, not all economic values had an observable correlation between the two. These findings could be used to further identify socioeconomic factors with the highest impact on disease infection rate, and therefore redirect public and private funding to solve underlying issues that allow the spread of disease.