Poor people more likely to be forced to ignore stay-at-home orders than the rich
Smartphone data from 45 million Americans found residents in less affluent areas complied with lockdown orders less often than richer peers at the height of the pandemic.
Scientists analysing the data found individuals that broke stay-at-home orders weren’t able to afford to stay at home or their professions were unable to be performed at home.
Researchers at the University of Arkansas found that a linked factor, education, also factored into the likelihood of someone complying with lockdown restrictions, with neighbourhoods with a large amount of university graduates spending longer at home.
The dataset included residents from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington D.C., Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Phoenix, Boston and San Francisco, between January and August last year.
The study, published in Annals of the American Association of Geographers, found the coronavirus pandemic highlighted social inequality.
‘Our study reveals the luxury nature of stay-at-home orders, which lower-income groups cannot afford to comply with,’ said lead author Xiao Huang, at the University of Arkansas.
‘This disparity exacerbates long-standing social inequality issues present in the United States, potentially causing unequal exposure to a virus that disproportionately affects vulnerable populations.’
Each of the 12 major cities ‘presents its own unique pattern, revealing the discrepancy in mitigation measures and the inconsistency in responses following these measures.’
Residents in affluent New York spent, on average, six hours more at home under the stay-at-home order, while residents in Phoenix, Arizona, spent less than 200 minutes.
Researchers also looked at residential smartphone data from the UK and found similar results – that those in more deprived and ethnically diverse communities were at higher risk of contracting Covid.
Office for National Statistics (ONS) data showed those living in the most deprived neighborhoods were more than twice as likely to die from Covid as those in the least deprived.
One of the reasons for this is that low-income workers typically have jobs that can’t be done from home, placing them at greater risk of contracting Covid-19.
‘We must confront systemic social inequality and call for a high-priority assessment of the long-term impact of Covid-19 on geographically and socially disadvantaged groups,’ Huang, the study’s lead author, said.
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