Strong Social Distancing Measures In The United States Reduced The COVID-19 Growth Rate

Courtemanche, Charles; Garuccio, Joseph; Le, Anh Ngoc; Pinkston, Joshua C.; Yelowitz, Aaron

doi:10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00608

Cited by 749 publications

(643 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…To ensure comparability in the start of the outbreak cycle across counties, column (6) restricts the sample such that a county enters the analysis only after it has experienced the start of the outbreak and some level of community spread (at least two cases). 16 The final column accounts for any potential border spillovers by controlling for the share of population in bordering counties that 14 In the presence of testing shortages, wherein tests are allocated to relatively sicker patients, confirmed counts of COVID-19 cases are more likely to reflect severe cases, which is arguably a more salient indicator of infections for studying the public health effects of a SIPO (Courtemanche et al 2020a). 15 The earliest date that these data are available at the county level in a consistent format is April 8, which is when we calculate the median testing rate.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Were Urban Cowboys Enough to Control COVID-19? Local Shelter-in-Place Orders and Coronavirus Case Growth

Dave

Friedson

Matsuzawa

et al. 2020

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including grant funding received from the Charles Koch Foundation and Troesh Family Foundation. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Were Urban Cowboys Enough to Control COVID-19? Local Shelter-in-Place Orders and Coronavirus Case Growth

Dave

Friedson

Matsuzawa

et al. 2020

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“…Why not allow the states that confronted it first try different strategies so that other states, with cases that developed later, could benefit from the successes? Indeed, there is strong evidence that the state-by-state decisions to invoke shelter-in-place orders significantly reduced the spread of the virus (Courtemanche et al 2020). But the bigger question remains: Was it advisable for the federal government to rely on the decisions of state and local governments to frame policies to control and mitigate a virus that was truly national in scope?…”

Section: Covid-19 Viewpointmentioning

confidence: 99%

States Divided: The Implications of American Federalism for COVID‐19

Kettl

2020

Public Administration Review

157

164

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The explosion of the coronavirus onto the global stage has posed unprecedented challenges for governance. In the United States, the question of how best to respond to these challenges has fractured along intergovernmental lines. The federal government left most of the decisions to the states, and the states went in very different directions. Some of those decisions naturally flowed from the disease's emerging patterns. But to a surprising degree, there were systematic variations in the governors’ decisions, and these variations were embedded in a subtle but growing pattern of differences among the states in a host of policy areas, ranging from decisions about embracing the Affordable Care Act to improving their infrastructure. These patterns raise fundamental questions about the role of the federal government's leadership in an issue that was truly national in scope, and whether such varied state reactions were in the public interest. The debate reinforces the emerging reality of an increasingly divided states of America.

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“…SIPOs, which require residents to remain at home for all but essential activities, have been shown to produce important benefits relative to other NPIs, both from eliciting social distancing behavior and from slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus (Cronin and Evans 2020; Courtemanche et al 2020a ,b; Friedson et al 2020 ; Dave et al 2020a; Sears et al 2020). 1 However, SIPOs may also limit economic activity.…”

Section: Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

JUE Insight: Were urban cowboys enough to control COVID-19? Local shelter-in-place orders and coronavirus case growth

Dave

Friedson

Matsuzawa

et al. 2022

Journal of Urban Economics

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One of the most common policy prescriptions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 has been to legally enforce social distancing through shelter-in-place orders (SIPOs). This study examines the role of localized urban SIPO policy in curbing COVID-19 cases. Specifically, we explore (i) the comparative effectiveness of county-level SIPOs in urbanized as compared to non-urbanized areas, (ii) the mechanisms through which SIPO adoption in urban counties yields COVID-related health benefits, and (iii) whether late adoption of a statewide SIPO yields health benefits beyond those achieved from early adopting counties. We exploit the unique laboratory of Texas, a state in which the early adoption of local SIPOs by densely populated counties covered almost two-thirds of the state's population prior to adoption of a statewide SIPO on April 2, 2020. Using an event study framework, we document that countywide SIPO adoption is associated with an 8 percent increase in the percent of residents who remain at home full-time and between a 13 to 19 percent decrease in foot-traffic at venues that may contribute to the spread of COVID-19 such as restaurants, bars, hotels, and entertainment venues. These social distancing effects are largest in urbanized and densely populated counties. Then, we find that in early adopting urban counties, COVID-19 case growth fell by 21 to 26 percentage points two-and-a-half weeks following adoption of a SIPO, a result robust to controls for county-level heterogeneity in COVID-19 outbreak timing, coronavirus testing, the age distribution, and political preferences. We find that approximately 90 percent of the curbed growth in COVID-19 cases in Texas came from the early adoption of SIPOs by urbanized counties, suggesting that the later statewide shelter-in-place mandate yielded relatively few health benefits.

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Strong Social Distancing Measures In The United States Reduced The COVID-19 Growth Rate

Cited by 749 publications

References 17 publications

Were Urban Cowboys Enough to Control COVID-19? Local Shelter-in-Place Orders and Coronavirus Case Growth

Were Urban Cowboys Enough to Control COVID-19? Local Shelter-in-Place Orders and Coronavirus Case Growth

States Divided: The Implications of American Federalism for COVID‐19

JUE Insight: Were urban cowboys enough to control COVID-19? Local shelter-in-place orders and coronavirus case growth

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