COVID-19 Working Paper 04/20
Suborna Barua*
Release date: 11 May 2020
A complete version of the paper is currently under consideration for publication with a journal. The full paper will available soon.
The rapidly globalized COVID-19 pandemic is set to bring major social and economic disorders globally. As a cure or treatment is yet unavailable, social distancing is considered as the key to fighting the disease. However, ensuring social distancing by all through voluntary approach in public is an extremely, perhaps, impossible task, which forces governments across the world to impose mandatory restrictions on outdoor public mobility. Unfortunately, not all countries can practice social distancing uniformly due to country-specific social and economic circumstances. This heterogeneity across countries put global efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 into threat.
This paper examines the heterogeneity and effectiveness of global social distancing patterns using daily Google mobility data for six categories of community places covering 128 countries over the period from 15 February to 17 April 2020. The mobility data measures daily changes in visits and length of stay in each of the six categories of places, namely, (i) Transit station, (ii) Workplace, (iii) Grocery & pharmacy, (iv) Retail & recreation, (v) Park, and (vi) Residential. Mobility in the first five categories of places can defined as ‘Outdoor’ and thus averaging mobility data across these categories results in a new data series of average ‘Outdoor’ mobility. On the other hand, Residential category can be treated as ‘Indoor’ mobility. Patterns of mobility are analyzed at the world level and then compared across regions and economic levels (e.g., developed vs developing). A comparison using mean-difference tests on Outdoor mobility between regions and economic levels is also carried out to develop further understanding.
The paper finds a
general divergence between mobility in each of the outdoor places and that in
indoor places (i.e., Residential) at the world aggregate level (Figure 1). This
means, social distancing is effective on average at the world level. The same
pattern is evident average Outdoor vs Indoor mobility is compared (Figure 2).
However, a significant heterogeneity across regions and economic levels is evident (Figure 3). Patterns show that US-Canada, European regions, and East Asia and the Pacific have highly volatile mobility changes, indicating lower effectiveness in social distancing. The three regions also consistently performs worse compared to other regions in terms of reducing average mobility in outdoor places. On the other hand, Latin America and the Caribbean and Central America and Mexico perform consistently better in achieving outdoor mobility reductions and show a consistent divergence between outdoor and indoor mobility over time. Among others, African regions, expect for Southern Africa, show a lower effectiveness in social distancing, while in Asia, South Asia displays the most effectiveness. Out of the 16 regions studied, East Asia and the Pacific shows the worst effectiveness over time and across countries.
Consistent with regional findings, developed economies display a relatively poor performance compared to upper middle-income economies, while the poorest economies struggle to ensure social distancing (Figure 4). Low income countries and Lower middle income countries lack substantially behind in reducing outdoor mobility, which can be largely attributed to their lower economic strength. In particular, maintaining strict social distancing is very difficult in these economies since a large share of population in these countries are poor and live on marginal income generating opportunities.
The significant heterogeneity in reducing outdoor mobility across the world may negate the effectiveness of social distancing - the only weapon the world has so far - in containing the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, some countries such as the US, UK, Germany, and other European Countries with the heaviest toll of COVID-19 show lax social distancing performance and an early lifting of lockdowns in these countries could be disastrous outcome for them and the world.
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