When Do Shelter‐in‐place Orders Fight Covid‐19 Best? Policy Heterogeneity Across States and Adoption Time

Abstract

This study explores the impact of Shelter-in-Place Orders (SIPOs) on health, with attention to heterogeneity in their impacts. First, using daily state-level social distancing data, we document that adoption of a SIPO was associated with a 9%-10% increase in the rate at which state residents remained in their homes full-time. Using daily state-level coronavirus case data, we find that approximately 3 weeks following the adoption of a SIPO, cumulative COVID-19 cases fell by approximately 53.5%. However, this average effect masks important heterogeneity across states-early adopters and high population density states appear to reap larger benefits from their SIPOs. (JEL H75, I12, I18) I. MOTIVATION The SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the disease COVID-19, has spread rapidly within the United States. The total number of confirmed cases in the United States on March 12, 2020 was 1,629 which grew to 18,747 confirmed cases within 7 days (Center for Disease Control and Prevention 2020). The primary strategy suggested by governments worldwide to reduce the spread of COVID-19 is social distancing (Australian Government Depart

The Effect of Shelter-in-Place Orders on Social Distancing and the Spread of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Study of Texas

“…Social distancing, also called "physical distancing" is defined by the CDC as keeping a safe space (at least 6 feet) between yourself and other people who are not from your household 3. The data are consistent with the count of cases and fatalities from the CDC and John Hopkins University.…”

Organizational Disaster Communication Ecology: Examining Interagency Coordination on Social Media During the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges to public health and emergency management agencies at various levels. Public policies such as shelter in place and mandatory facecovering were implemented at different phases across the country to contain the disease's rapid spread (Dave et al, 2020).…”

“…Despite being a global pandemic, the U.S. government's response to COVID-19 is highly localized, and the specific response significantly diverges across different jurisdictions (Dave et al, 2020). In the current study, we focus on public agencies' COVID-19 response in Texas for the following reasons.…”

The Impact of the first COVID-19 shelter-in-place announcement on social distancing, difficulty in daily activities, and levels of concern in the San Francisco Bay Area: A cross-sectional social media survey

“…Much of the literature-to-date on orders to shelter-in-place from the U.S. examines their effectiveness, and generally demonstrates short-term behavior change [ 32 , 42 , 43 ]. Difference-in-differences analysis of daily state-level data from March 8, 2020–April 17, 2020 demonstrates that enactment of SIPOs is associate with an approximate 2.1 percent increase in the stay-at-home rate nationally [ 29 ]. Using data form the U.S. Department of Transportation, Gupta and colleagues find that out-of-state travel fell by approximately 54% between March 1, 2020–April 14, 2020 [ 43 ].…”

“…More specifically, we use a difference-in-differences estimator to estimate changes among respondents living in the seven counties in the San Francisco Bay Area affected by the announcement versus those living elsewhere in the U.S. A large body of COVID-19 literature has employed quasi-experimental methods to examine the impact of the pandemic on a variety of topics including superspreader events [ 21 – 23 ], air pollution [ 24 , 25 ], unemployment [ 26 ], and demand for online shopping [ 27 ]. Many of these quasi-experimental studies have focused on changes in human mobility using aggregated smartphone-based measures such as time spent at home [ 28 , 29 ]. Relatively fewer studies have applied quasi-experimental techniques to examine the impact of SIPOs, and those that do often focus on cases, hospitalizations, mortality, or transmission [ 30 – 32 ].…”