The Minneapolis Fed discusses a working paper that crunched cell phone location data in New York City to find that low-income Americans and minorities are suffering worse from the coronavirus pandemic because “they often work in frontline occupations and live in crowded homes“:
The theory is not novel, but the study provides some of the most substantive and detailed empirical backing for it and develops techniques that others will likely find valuable. The economists use anonymized cell phone pings to analyze mobility patterns in New York City between March and July 2020. They merge phone data with geospatial and building structure maps to measure housing density. With these data sets, they construct metrics on commuting patterns and housing conditions sorted by race, ethnicity, income, occupation, and other variables.
Their analyses show that people who lived in areas of the city that are disproportionately Black, Hispanic, and low-income tended to commute to their jobs and live in relatively crowded homes. Both commuting and crowding were linked at aggregate and individual levels to higher likelihood of extended hospitalization during a period when hospital beds were prioritized for COVID-19 patients.
The commute itself wasn’t the primary mode of contagion, argue the economists; rather, the commute indicated an occupation that was both essential and exposed—with potential for repeated virus infection. Contagion at home was the other key vector; crowded housing conditions raised the likelihood of transmission from family members and even nearby neighbors. Analysis shows that both risk measures—out-of-home mobility and in-home crowding—were key drivers of NYC pandemic patterns in the early weeks, though their relative strength varied over time [Douglas Clement, “Commuting, Crowding, and Covid-19,” Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota, 2021.03.18].
The paper acknowledges that density isn’t everything. But it only makes sense that the less people have to go out—i.e., the more willing communities have been to shut their business doors and let more workers stay home, and the more willing all of us have been to limit our trips out and take precautions on our rare excursions to reduce the risk essential workers face from their multitudinous daily contacts—the less chances they have to bring infection back to their houses and apartments and combine their risk factors with the family and friends with whom they share a roof.
South Dakota has smaller than average household size and far lower population density than New York City or State. But our case rate per 100,000 for the full year of the pandemic is the second highest in the nation, while New York’s is 31st. On deaths per 100,000, New York is second highest, while South Dakota is eighth highest.
We can only conclude that if we were more creative and courageous and less selfish and reckless, if more of us were staying home, fewer of us would be getting sick and leaving our state economy with the lasting damage of lost lives.
Sunday’s drumpf/noem body count was 444.