IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eca/wpaper/2013-309398.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Spread of COVID-19 in Belgium: a Municipality-Level Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Philip Verwimp

Abstract

In this contribution I analyse socio-economic and demographic correlates of the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic across Belgian municipalities. I am interested in the onset of the epidemic, its intensity early on as well as the growth of contaminations in April. The paper uses contamination data from Sciensano, the Belgian health agency in charge of epidemiological information. In the period under investigation, March and April 2020, Belgium used a uniform and restrictive test policy for COVID-19, which changed on May 4th. The data are completed with socio-economic and demographic data published by governmental agencies. Employing linear and log-linear models I find that COVID-19 spread faster in larger, more densely populated, higher income municipalities with more elderly people and a larger share of the elderly population residing in care homes. Richer municipalities managed to slow down the epidemic in April more compared to poorer ones. Municipalities which were more exposed to migration, foreign travel for business, leisure or family affairs were affected earlier on in the epidemic. Income correlates with the contamination rate in particular in the Flemish Region whereas the share of foreign nationalities correlates with the contamination rate in particular in the Walloon Region.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip Verwimp, 2020. "The Spread of COVID-19 in Belgium: a Municipality-Level Analysis," Working Papers ECARES 2020-25, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/309398
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/309398/3/2020-25-VERWIMP-spread.pdf
    File Function: Full text for the whole work, or for a work part
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bartscher, Alina Kristin & Seitz, Sebastian & Siegloch, Sebastian & Slotwinski, Michaela & Wehrhöfer, Nils, 2021. "Social capital and the spread of covid-19: Insights from european countries," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    2. Joshua D. Angrist & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2009. "Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 8769.
    3. Victor Ginsburgh & Glenn Magerman & Ilaria Natali, 2020. "COVID-19 and the Role of Economic Conditions in French Regional Departments," Working Papers ECARES 2020-17, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    4. McKenzie, David, 2012. "Beyond baseline and follow-up: The case for more T in experiments," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 210-221.
    5. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    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. Steven Stillman & Mirco Tonin, 2022. "Communities and testing for COVID-19," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 23(4), pages 617-625, June.
    2. Jacek Rothert & Ryan Brady & Michael Insler, 2020. "The Fragmented United States of America: The impact of scattered lock-down policies on country-wide infections," Departmental Working Papers 65, United States Naval Academy Department of Economics.
    3. Victor Ginsburgh & Glenn Magerman & Ilaria Natali, 2021. "COVID-19 and the role of inequality in French regional departments," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 22(2), pages 311-327, March.
    4. Bello, Piera & Rocco, Lorenzo, 2022. "Education and COVID-19 excess mortality," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    5. Desmet, Klaus & Wacziarg, Romain, 2022. "JUE Insight: Understanding spatial variation in COVID-19 across the United States," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    6. Bello, Piera & Rocco, Lorenzo, 2021. "Education, Information, and COVID-19 Excess Mortality," IZA Discussion Papers 14402, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Jacek Rothert & Ryan Brady & Michael Insler, 2020. "Local containment policies and country-wide spread of Covid-19 in the United States: an epidemiological analysis," GRAPE Working Papers 48, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.

    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. Alloush, Mo & Bloem, Jeffrey R., 2022. "Neighborhood violence, poverty, and psychological well-being," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    2. Armin Falk & Fabian Kosse & Ingo Menrath & Pablo Emilio Verde & Johannes Siegrist, 2014. "Unfair Pay and Health," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 715, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    3. Peppel-Srebrny, Jemima, 2021. "Not all government budget deficits are created equal: Evidence from advanced economies' sovereign bond markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    4. Marie Bjørneby & Annette Alstadsæter & Kjetil Telle, 2018. "Collusive tax evasion by employers and employees. Evidence from a randomized fi eld experiment in Norway," Discussion Papers 891, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    5. Emilio Depetris-Chauvin & Ömer Özak, 2020. "The origins of the division of labor in pre-industrial times," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 297-340, September.
    6. James Bishop & Iris Chan, 2019. "Is Declining Union Membership Contributing to Low Wages Growth?," RBA Annual Conference Papers acp2019-06, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    7. Baccini, Leonardo & Impullitti, Giammario & Malesky, Edmund J., 2019. "Globalization and state capitalism: Assessing Vietnam's accession to the WTO," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 75-92.
    8. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, 2012. "Trade and Regional Inequality," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 88(2), pages 109-136, April.
    9. David E. Bloom & David Canning & Günther Fink, 2014. "Disease and Development Revisited," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(6), pages 1355-1366.
    10. Eichhorst, Werner & Krause-Pilatus, Annabelle & Marx, Paul & Dolls, Mathias & Lay, Max, 2023. "Minimum Income Support Systems as Elements of Crisis Resilience in Europe," IZA Discussion Papers 16066, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Hemant K. Bhargava & Abhay Nath Mishra, 2014. "Electronic Medical Records and Physician Productivity: Evidence from Panel Data Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(10), pages 2543-2562, October.
    12. Bjørneby, Marie & Alstadsæter, Annette & Telle, Kjetil, 2021. "Limits to third-party reporting: Evidence from a randomized field experiment in Norway," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    13. Richard Adjei Dwumfour & Eric Fosu Oteng-Abayie & Emmanuel Kwasi Mensah, 2022. "Bank efficiency and the bank lending channel: new evidence," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(3), pages 1489-1542, September.
    14. Jean-François Maystadt & Valerie Mueller & Ashwini Sebastian, 2016. "Environmental Migration and Labor Markets in Nepal," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(2), pages 417-452.
    15. Laptieva, Nataliia, 2016. "Information sharing and the volume of private credit in transition: Evidence from Ukrainian bank-level panel dataAuthor-Name: Grajzl, Peter," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 434-449.
    16. Dietz, Daniel & Zwick, Thomas, 2016. "The retention effect of training: Portability, visibility, and credibility," ZEW Discussion Papers 16-011, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    17. Bermúdez-Barrezueta, Natalia & Camino-Mogro, Segundo & Arboleda, Xavier, 2022. "Production and enterprise profitability in Ecuador’s crop-growing sector," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), August.
    18. Stimpfle, Alexander & Stadelmann, David, 2015. "The Impact of Fundamental Development Factors on Different Income Groups: International Evidence," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113128, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    19. Andrea Bassanini & Thomas Manfredi, 2014. "Capital’s grabbing hand? A cross-industry analysis of the decline of the labor share in OECD countries," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 4(1), pages 3-30, June.
    20. Kelly A. Davidson & Jaclyn D. Kropp & Conner Mullally & Md. Wakilur Rahman, 2021. "Can Simple Nudges and Workshops Improve Diet Quality? Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Bangladesh," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(1), pages 253-274, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; regression analysis; municipality; Belgium;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:eca:wpaper:2013/309398. 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: Benoit Pauwels (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/arulbbe.html .

    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.