IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0240151.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social determinants of COVID-19 mortality at the county level

Author

Listed:
  • Rebecca K Fielding-Miller
  • Maria E Sundaram
  • Kimberly Brouwer

Abstract

As of August 2020, the United States is the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Emerging data suggests that “essential” workers, who are disproportionately more likely to be racial/ethnic minorities and immigrants, bear a disproportionate degree of risk. We used publicly available data to build a series of spatial autoregressive models assessing county level associations between COVID-19 mortality and (1) percentage of individuals engaged in farm work, (2) percentage of households without a fluent, adult English-speaker, (3) percentage of uninsured individuals under the age of 65, and (4) percentage of individuals living at or below the federal poverty line. We further adjusted these models for total population, population density, and number of days since the first reported case in a given county. We found that across all counties that had reported a case of COVID-19 as of July 12, 2020 (n = 3024), a higher percentage of farmworkers, a higher percentage of residents living in poverty, higher density, higher population, and a higher percentage of residents over the age of 65 were all independently and significantly associated with a higher number of deaths in a county. In urban counties (n = 115), a higher percentage of farmworkers, higher density, and larger population were all associated with a higher number of deaths, while lower rates of insurance coverage in a county was independently associated with fewer deaths. In non-urban counties (n = 2909), these same patterns held true, with higher percentages of residents living in poverty and senior residents also significantly associated with more deaths. Taken together, our findings suggest that farm workers may face unique risks of contracting and dying from COVID-19, and that these risks are independent of poverty, insurance, or linguistic accessibility of COVID-19 health campaigns.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebecca K Fielding-Miller & Maria E Sundaram & Kimberly Brouwer, 2020. "Social determinants of COVID-19 mortality at the county level," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-11, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0240151
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240151
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0240151
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0240151&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0240151?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. Chaussé, Pierre, 2010. "Computing Generalized Method of Moments and Generalized Empirical Likelihood with R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 34(i11).
    2. Philbin, Morgan M. & Flake, Morgan & Hatzenbuehler, Mark L. & Hirsch, Jennifer S., 2018. "State-level immigration and immigrant-focused policies as drivers of Latino health disparities in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 29-38.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. ArunKumar, K.E. & Kalaga, Dinesh V. & Kumar, Ch. Mohan Sai & Kawaji, Masahiro & Brenza, Timothy M, 2021. "Forecasting of COVID-19 using deep layer Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) with Gated Recurrent Units (GRUs) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) cells," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    2. Viridiana Ríos & Edgar Denova-Gutiérrez & Simón Barquera, 2022. "Association between living in municipalities with high crowding conditions and poverty and mortality from COVID-19 in Mexico," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(2), pages 1-15, February.
    3. Renato Quiliche & Rafael Rentería-Ramos & Irineu de Brito Junior & Ana Luna & Mario Chong, 2021. "Using Spatial Patterns of COVID-19 to Build a Framework for Economic Reactivation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-23, September.
    4. Chenarides, Lauren & Richards, Timothy & Rickard, Bradley, 2021. "COVID-19 Impact on Fruit and Vegetable Markets: One Year Later," Working Papers 309965, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    5. Lauren Chenarides & Timothy J. Richards & Bradley Rickard, 2021. "COVID‐19 impact on fruit and vegetable markets: One year later," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 69(2), pages 203-214, June.
    6. Elizabeth B. Pathak & Janelle M. Menard & Rebecca B. Garcia & Jason L. Salemi, 2022. "Joint Effects of Socioeconomic Position, Race/Ethnicity, and Gender on COVID-19 Mortality among Working-Age Adults in the United States," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(9), pages 1-15, April.
    7. Lee, Haena & Andrasfay, Theresa & Riley, Alicia & Wu, Qiao & Crimmins, Eileen, 2022. "Do social determinants of health explain racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-19 infection?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 306(C).
    8. Mikolai, Júlia & Dorey, Peter & Keenan, Katherine & Kulu, Hill, 2023. "Spatial patterns of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 mortality across waves of infection in England, Wales, and Scotland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 338(C).
    9. Boberg-Fazlic, Nina & Ivets, Maryna & Karlsson, Martin & Nilsson, Therese, 2021. "Disease and fertility: Evidence from the 1918–19 influenza pandemic in Sweden," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).

    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. Sylvestre, Paul & Castleden, Heather & Denis, Jeff & Martin, Debbie & Bombay, Amy, 2019. "The tools at their fingertips: How settler colonial geographies shape medical educators’ strategies for grappling with Anti-Indigenous racism," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 237(C), pages 1-1.
    2. Chenoa A. Flippen & Rebecca A. Schut, 2022. "Migration and Contraception among Mexican Women: Assessing Selection, Disruption, and Adaptation," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 41(2), pages 495-520, April.
    3. MacLean, Sarah A. & Agyeman, Priscilla O. & Walther, Joshua & Singer, Elizabeth K. & Baranowski, Kim A. & Katz, Craig L., 2019. "Mental health of children held at a United States immigration detention center," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 230(C), pages 303-308.
    4. Villarreal-Otálora, Tatiana & Boyas, Javier F. & Alvarez-Hernandez, Luis R. & Fatehi, Mariam, 2020. "Ecological factors influencing suicidal ideation-to-action among Latinx adolescents: An exploration of sex differences," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    5. Tianyuan Luo & Genti Kostandini, 2023. "Omnibus or Ominous immigration laws? Immigration policy and mental health of the Hispanic population," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(1), pages 90-106, January.
    6. Jennifer J. Salinas & Jon Sheen & Malcolm Carlyle & Navkiran K. Shokar & Gerardo Vazquez & Daniel Murphy & Ogechika Alozie, 2020. "Using Electronic Medical Record Data to Better Understand Obesity in Hispanic Neighborhoods in El Paso, Texas," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(12), pages 1-12, June.
    7. Dubal, Sam B. & Samra, Shamsher S. & Janeway, Hannah H., 2021. "Beyond border health: Infrastructural violence and the health of border abolition," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 279(C).
    8. Molly Dondero & Claire E. Altman, 2022. "State-Level Immigrant Policy Climates and Health Care Among U.S. Children of Immigrants," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 41(6), pages 2683-2708, December.
    9. Eric S. Lin & Ta-Sheng Chou, 2018. "Finite-sample refinement of GMM approach to nonlinear models under heteroskedasticity of unknown form," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(1), pages 1-28, January.
    10. Parker, Emily, 2021. "Spatial variation in access to the health care safety net for Hispanic immigrants, 1970–2017," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 273(C).
    11. Maria-Elena Trinidad Young & Gabriela León-Pérez & Christine R. Wells & Steven P. Wallace, 2018. "More Inclusive States, Less Poverty Among Immigrants? An Examination of Poverty, Citizenship Stratification, and State Immigrant Policies," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 37(2), pages 205-228, April.
    12. Monika Doshi & William D Lopez & Hannah Mesa & Richard Bryce & Ellen Rabinowitz & Raymond Rion & Paul J Fleming, 2020. "Barriers & facilitators to healthcare and social services among undocumented Latino(a)/Latinx immigrant clients: Perspectives from frontline service providers in Southeast Michigan," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-18, June.
    13. Paul S. Clarke & Tom M. Palmer & Frank Windmeijer, 2011. "Estimating structural mean models with multiple instrumental variables using the generalised method of moments," CeMMAP working papers CWP28/11, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    14. Michele Leonardo Bianchi & Asmerilda Hitaj & Gian Luca Tassinari, 2020. "Multivariate non-Gaussian models for financial applications," Papers 2005.06390, arXiv.org.
    15. Philbin, Morgan M. & Wurtz, Heather M. & McCrimmon, Tara & Kelly, Erin & Homan, Patricia & Guta, Adrian, 2023. "How social policies shape the health and well-being of sexual- and gender-minority youth: Pathways of influence, social side effects and implications for life course trajectories," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 317(C).
    16. Benavides, Quetzabel & Doshi, Monika & Valentín-Cortés, Mislael & Militzer, Maria & Quiñones, Spring & Kraut, Ruth & Rion, Raymond & Bryce, Richard & Lopez, William D. & Fleming, Paul J., 2021. "Immigration law enforcement, social support, and health for Latino immigrant families in Southeastern Michigan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 280(C).
    17. Chaparro, M. Pia & Auchincloss, Amy H. & Argibay, Sofia & Ruggiero, Dominic A. & Purtle, Jonathan & Langellier, Brent A., 2023. "County- and state-level immigration policies are associated with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation among Latino households," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 333(C).
    18. Kritzia Merced & Chimdindu Ohayagha & Ria Grover & Isis Garcia-Rodriguez & Oswaldo Moreno & Paul B. Perrin, 2022. "Spanish Translation and Psychometric Validation of a Measure of Acculturative Stress among Latinx Immigrants in the USA," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(5), pages 1-14, February.
    19. Pierre Chausse & Dinghai Xu, 2012. "GMM Estimation of a Stochastic Volatility Model with Realized Volatility: A Monte Carlo Study," Working Papers 1203, University of Waterloo, Department of Economics, revised May 2012.
    20. Brown, Calla R. & Shramko, Maura & Garcia-Huidobro, Diego & Miller, Kathleen K. & Brar, Pooja & Ogugua, Fredrick & Svetaz, Maria Veronica, 2020. "Increased rates of parental separation and anxiety among Latinx youth," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).

    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:plo:pone00:0240151. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.