Year: 2021
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: COVID-19 has had dramatic impacts on economic outcomes across the United States, yet most research on the pandemic has had a national or urban focus. We overcome this limitation using data from the U.S. Current Population Survey’s COVID-19 supplement to study pandemic-related labor force outcomes from May through December of 2020 in rural and urban areas. We find the pandemic has generally had a more severe labor force impact on urban residents than their rural counterparts. Urban adults were more likely to be unable to work, not paid for missed hours, and be unable to look for work due to COVID-19. However, rural workers were less likely to be able to work remotely than urban workers. These differences persist even when adjusting estimates for demographic composition and state-level policies, suggesting rural-urban differences in the COVID-19 experience cannot be explained by well-known demographic and political differences between rural and urban America.
Authors: Matthew M Brooks, Tom Mueller, Brian C. Thiede
Institutions: Utah State University, Pennsylvania State University
Language: English
Topic: COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4237895323