Professor Parantap Basu parantap.basu@durham.ac.uk
Professor
COVID Social Distancing and the Poor: An Analysis of the Evidence for England
Basu, Parantap; Bell, Clive; Edwards, T. Huw
Authors
Clive Bell
T. Huw Edwards
Abstract
Social distancing is a matter of individuals’ choices as well as of regulation. We analyse weekly panel data on such behaviour for English Upper Tier Local Authorities (UTLAs) from March to July 2020, paying attention to the influence of poverty, as measured by free school meals provision. Panel regressions suggest that, although more stringent regulation and slightly lagged local cases of infection increase social distancing, both effects are weaker in UTLAs with higher levels of poverty, in part because of poor housing, and also because shortage of money has forced the poor to keep working. Thus motivated, we develop a two-class (rich/poor) model, in which a Nash non-cooperative equilibrium arises from individual choices in a regulatory regime with penalties for non-compliance. The model yields results in keeping with the empirical findings, indicating the desirability of generous measures to furlough workers in low-paid jobs as a complement to the stringency of general regulation.
Citation
Basu, P., Bell, C., & Edwards, T. H. (2022). COVID Social Distancing and the Poor: An Analysis of the Evidence for England. BE Journal of Macroeconomics, 22(1), 211-240. https://doi.org/10.1515/bejm-2020-0250
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Jan 31, 2021 |
Online Publication Date | Feb 16, 2022 |
Publication Date | 2022-01 |
Deposit Date | Feb 1, 2021 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 29, 2024 |
Journal | BE Journal of Macroeconomics |
Publisher | De Gruyter |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 22 |
Issue | 1 |
Pages | 211-240 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1515/bejm-2020-0250 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1253301 |
Files
Accepted Journal Article
(1.1 Mb)
PDF
Copyright Statement
© 2021 Parantap Basu et al., published by De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Published Journal Article
(987 Kb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
You might also like
Labour immobility between industries: Consequences for the macroeconomy
(2024)
Journal Article
Future of the Kirana stores in India
(2024)
Other
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search