JUE Insight: The determinants of the differential exposure to COVID-19 in New York city and their evolution over time

Abstract

We argue that occupations are a key explanatory variable for understanding the early transmission of COVID-19 in New York City, finding that they play a larger role than other key demographics such as race or income. Moreover, we find no evidence that commuting patterns are significant after controlling for occupations. On the other hand, racial disparities still persist for Blacks and Hispanics compared with Whites, although the disparities' magnitudes are economically small. We perform our analysis over a range of several weeks to evaluate how different channels interact with the progression of the pandemic and the stay-at-home order. While the coefficient magnitudes of many occupations and demographics decrease, we find evidence consistent with higher intra-household contagion over time. Finally, our results also suggest that crowded spaces play a more important role than population density in the spread of COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19 exposure; Demographic disparities; Density; Housing density; Income disparities; Occupations; Racial disparities.

Fig. 1

Rate of Positive Tests ($\frac{\text{Positive}\text{tests}}{\text{Total}\text{tests}}·100$) by Zip Code as of March 31, 2020.

Fig. 2

Daily Evolution of Coefficients.