IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/jp4wk.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Partisanship and the Spread of COVID-19 in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Kubinec, Robert

    (Princeton University)

  • Carvalho, Luiz
  • Barceló, Joan

    (New York University - Abu Dhabi)

  • Cheng, Cindy

    (Technical University of Munich)

  • Hartnett, Allison
  • Messerschmidt, Luca
  • Duba, Derek
  • Cottrell, Matthew Sean

Abstract

In this paper we use a Bayesian latent variable model to identify the effect of sociopolitical covariates on the historical COVID-19 infection rate among the 50 states. The model is calibrated using serology surveys issued by the Center for Disease Control. We show that as of July 14th, there are approximately 10 million people who have been infected with COVID-19 in the United States, and these people are concentrated in states that voted against President Donald Trump in 2016, are less concerned about COVID-19, are relatively unlikely to wear masks, and have fewer economic resources. Second, we find that increased mobility measured by Google cell phones in grocery stores and retail establishments has the highest correlation with subsequent COVID-19 spread, and that mobility is an important mediator of covariates and the spread of the disease. However, although support for President Trump correlates strongly with reduced COVID-19 infections, we find that this result does not come about via reduced mobility. Instead, it would appear more likely that conservative states were spared early outbreaks due to random or exogenous factors, and instead people may be inferring that partisanship has a causal effect on the disease when in fact it is likely a confounded association.

Suggested Citation

  • Kubinec, Robert & Carvalho, Luiz & Barceló, Joan & Cheng, Cindy & Hartnett, Allison & Messerschmidt, Luca & Duba, Derek & Cottrell, Matthew Sean, 2020. "Partisanship and the Spread of COVID-19 in the United States," SocArXiv jp4wk, Center for Open Science.
  • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:jp4wk
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/jp4wk
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/5e8496518140b401994222ea/
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/jp4wk?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wright, Austin L. & Sonin, Konstantin & Driscoll, Jesse & Wilson, Jarnickae, 2020. "Poverty and economic dislocation reduce compliance with COVID-19 shelter-in-place protocols," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 544-554.
    2. Tasnim, Samia & Hossain, Md Mahbub & Mazumder, Hoimonty, 2020. "Impact of rumors or misinformation on coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in social media," SocArXiv uf3zn, Center for Open Science.
    3. Christian Dudel & Timothy Riffe & Enrique Acosta & Alyson A. van Raalte & Cosmo Strozza & Mikko Myrskylä, 2020. "Monitoring trends and differences in COVID-19 case-fatality rates using decomposition methods: contributions of age structure and age-specific fatality," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2020-020, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    RePEc Biblio mentions

    As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:
    1. > Economics of Welfare > Health Economics > Economics of Pandemics > Specific pandemics > Covid-19 > Health

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anindya Ghose & Beibei Li & Meghanath Macha & Chenshuo Sun & Natasha Ying Zhang Foutz, 2020. "Trading Privacy for the Greater Social Good: How Did America React During COVID-19?," Papers 2006.05859, arXiv.org.
    2. Anubhab Gupta & Heng Zhu & Miki Khanh Doan & Aleksandr Michuda & Binoy Majumder, 2021. "Economic Impacts of the COVID−19 Lockdown in a Remittance‐Dependent Region," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(2), pages 466-485, March.
    3. Arda Gitmez & Konstantine Sonin & Austin L. Wright, 2020. "Political Economy of Crisis Response," Working Papers 2020-68, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    4. Austin L. Wright & Geet Chawla & Luke Chen & Anthony Farmer, 2020. "Tracking Mask Mandates during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Working Papers 2020-104, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    5. Borau, Sylvie & Couprie, Hélène & Hopfensitz, Astrid, 2022. "The prosociality of married people: Evidence from a large multinational sample," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    6. Maxim Ananyev & Michael Poyker & Yuan Tian, 2021. "The safest time to fly: pandemic response in the era of Fox News," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(3), pages 775-802, July.
    7. Nicholas W. Papageorge & Matthew V. Zahn & Michèle Belot & Eline Broek-Altenburg & Syngjoo Choi & Julian C. Jamison & Egon Tripodi, 2021. "Socio-demographic factors associated with self-protecting behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(2), pages 691-738, April.
    8. Chukwuere Joshua Ebere, 2022. "The Analysis on the Use of Social Media in Managing the Covid-19 Pandemic Information Flow," HOLISTICA – Journal of Business and Public Administration, Sciendo, vol. 13(1), pages 73-80, July.
    9. Barrios, John M. & Benmelech, Efraim & Hochberg, Yael V. & Sapienza, Paola & Zingales, Luigi, 2021. "Civic capital and social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic☆," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    10. Zander S. Venter & Adam Sadilek & Charlotte Stanton & David N. Barton & Kristin Aunan & Sourangsu Chowdhury & Aaron Schneider & Stefano Maria Iacus, 2021. "Mobility in Blue-Green Spaces Does Not Predict COVID-19 Transmission: A Global Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(23), pages 1-12, November.
    11. Eunha Shim, 2021. "Regional Variability in COVID-19 Case Fatality Rate in Canada, February–December 2020," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(4), pages 1-10, February.
    12. Anthony Medford & Sergi Trias-Llimós, 2020. "Population age structure only partially explains the large number of COVID-19 deaths at the oldest ages," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 43(19), pages 533-544.
    13. Mauro Caselli & Andrea Fracasso & Sergio Scicchitano, 2022. "From the lockdown to the new normal: individual mobility and local labor market characteristics following the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(4), pages 1517-1550, October.
    14. Auld, M. Christopher & Toxvaerd, Flavio, 2021. "The Great Covid-19 Vaccine Rollout: Behavioural And Policy Responses," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 257, pages 14-35, August.
    15. Dizioli, Allan & Pinheiro, Roberto, 2021. "Information and inequality in the time of a pandemic," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    16. Ján Palguta & René Levínský & Samuel Škoda, 2022. "Do elections accelerate the COVID-19 pandemic?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(1), pages 197-240, January.
    17. Egorov, Georgy & Enikolopov, Ruben & Makarin, Alexey & Petrova, Maria, 2021. "Divided we stay home: Social distancing and ethnic diversity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    18. Simona Bignami-Van Assche & Daniela Ghio, 2022. "Comparing COVID-19 fatality across countries: a synthetic demographic indicator," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 39(4), pages 513-525, December.
    19. John Creedy & S. Subramanian, 2022. "Mortality Comparisons ‘At a Glance’: A Mortality Concentration Curve and Decomposition Analysis for India," Sankhya B: The Indian Journal of Statistics, Springer;Indian Statistical Institute, vol. 84(2), pages 873-894, November.
    20. Ori Plonsky & Yefim Roth & Ido Erev, 2021. "Underweighting of rare events in social interactions and its implications to the design of voluntary health applications," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 16(2), pages 267-289, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:jp4wk. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.