The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people's mobility: A longitudinal study of the U.S. from March to September of 2020

Abstract

This paper examines changes in people's mobility over a 7-month period (from March 1st to September 30th, 2020) during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. using longitudinal models and county-level mobility data obtained from people's anonymized mobile phone signals. It differentiates two distinct waves of the study period: Wave 1 (March–June) and Wave 2 (June–September). It also analyzes the relationships of these mobility changes with various social, spatial, policy, and political factors. The results indicate that mobility changes in Wave 1 have a V-shaped trend: people's mobility first declined at the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (March–April) but quickly recovered to the pre-pandemic mobility levels from April to June. The rates of mobility changes during this period are significantly associated with most of our key variables, including political partisanship, poverty level, and the strictness of mobility restriction policies. For Wave 2, there was very little mobility decline despite the existence of mobility restriction policies and the COVID-19 pandemic becoming more severe. Our findings suggest that restricting people's mobility to control the pandemic may be effective only for a short period, especially in liberal democratic societies. Further, since poor people (who are mostly essential workers) kept traveling during the pandemic, health authorities should pay special attention to these people by implementing policies to mitigate their high COVID-19 exposure risk.