In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing number of states, counties and cities in the United States issued mandatory stay-at-home orders as part of their efforts to slow down the spread of the virus. We argue that the consequences of this one-size-fits-all order will be differentially distributed among economic groups. In this paper, we examine social distance behavior changes for lower income populations. We conduct a comparative analysis of responses between lower-income and upper-income groups and assess their relative exposure to COVID-19 risks. Using a difference-in-difference-in-differences analysis of 3140 counties, we find social distance policy effect on the lower-income group is smaller than that of the upper-income group, by as much as 46% to 54%. Our explorations of the mechanisms behind the disparate effects suggest that for the work-related trips the stay-at-home orders do not significantly reduce low income work trips and this result is statistically significant. That is, the share of essential business defined by stay-at-home orders is significantly negatively correlated with income at county level. In the non-work-related trips, we find that both the lower-income and upper-income groups reduced visits to retail, recreation, grocery, and pharmacy visits after the stay-at-home order, with the upper-income group reducing trips more compared to lower-income group.

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对于低收入群体来说，居家令是否更难遵守？

为了应对 COVID-19 大流行，美国越来越多的州、县和城市发布了强制居家令，作为减缓病毒传播努力的一部分。我们认为，这种一刀切的秩序的后果将在不同经济群体之间分配不同。在本文中，我们研究了低收入人群的社交距离行为变化。我们对低收入群体和高收入群体的反应进行比较分析，并评估他们对 COVID-19 风险的相对暴露程度。通过对3140个县的双重差分分析，我们发现社会距离政策对低收入群体的影响小于高收入群体，达46%至54%。我们对不同影响背后机制的探索表明，对于与工作相关的旅行，居家令并没有显着减少低收入工作旅行，而且这一结果具有统计显着性。也就是说，居家订单定义的基本业务份额与县级收入显着负相关。在非工作相关的出行中，我们发现，在居家令之后，低收入和高收入群体都减少了前往零售、娱乐、杂货店和药店的次数，其中高收入群体减少了去零售、娱乐、杂货和药房的次数。与低收入群体相比，出行次数更多。