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Socio-demographic factors associated with self-protecting behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic

Given the role of human behavior in the spread of disease, it is vital to understand what drives people to engage in or refrain from health-related behaviors during a pandemic. This paper examines factors associated with the adoption of self-protective health behaviors, such as social distancing and...

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Autores principales: Papageorge, Nicholas W., Zahn, Matthew V., Belot, Michèle, van den Broek-Altenburg, Eline, Choi, Syngjoo, Jamison, Julian C., Tripodi, Egon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7807230/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33462529
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00148-020-00818-x
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author Papageorge, Nicholas W.
Zahn, Matthew V.
Belot, Michèle
van den Broek-Altenburg, Eline
Choi, Syngjoo
Jamison, Julian C.
Tripodi, Egon
author_facet Papageorge, Nicholas W.
Zahn, Matthew V.
Belot, Michèle
van den Broek-Altenburg, Eline
Choi, Syngjoo
Jamison, Julian C.
Tripodi, Egon
author_sort Papageorge, Nicholas W.
collection PubMed
description Given the role of human behavior in the spread of disease, it is vital to understand what drives people to engage in or refrain from health-related behaviors during a pandemic. This paper examines factors associated with the adoption of self-protective health behaviors, such as social distancing and mask wearing, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in the USA. These behaviors not only reduce an individual’s own risk of infection but also limit the spread of disease to others. Despite these dual benefits, universal adoption of these behaviors is not assured. We focus on the role of socioeconomic differences in explaining behavior, relying on data collected in April 2020 during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. The data include information on income, gender and race along with unique variables relevant to the current pandemic, such as work arrangements and housing quality. We find that higher income is associated with larger changes in self-protective behaviors. These gradients are partially explained by the fact that people with less income are more likely to report circumstances that make adopting self-protective behaviors more difficult, such as an inability to tele-work. Both in the USA and elsewhere, policies that assume universal compliance with self-protective measures—or that otherwise do not account for socioeconomic differences in the costs of doing so—are unlikely to be effective or sustainable.
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spelling pubmed-78072302021-01-14 Socio-demographic factors associated with self-protecting behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic Papageorge, Nicholas W. Zahn, Matthew V. Belot, Michèle van den Broek-Altenburg, Eline Choi, Syngjoo Jamison, Julian C. Tripodi, Egon J Popul Econ Original Paper Given the role of human behavior in the spread of disease, it is vital to understand what drives people to engage in or refrain from health-related behaviors during a pandemic. This paper examines factors associated with the adoption of self-protective health behaviors, such as social distancing and mask wearing, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in the USA. These behaviors not only reduce an individual’s own risk of infection but also limit the spread of disease to others. Despite these dual benefits, universal adoption of these behaviors is not assured. We focus on the role of socioeconomic differences in explaining behavior, relying on data collected in April 2020 during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. The data include information on income, gender and race along with unique variables relevant to the current pandemic, such as work arrangements and housing quality. We find that higher income is associated with larger changes in self-protective behaviors. These gradients are partially explained by the fact that people with less income are more likely to report circumstances that make adopting self-protective behaviors more difficult, such as an inability to tele-work. Both in the USA and elsewhere, policies that assume universal compliance with self-protective measures—or that otherwise do not account for socioeconomic differences in the costs of doing so—are unlikely to be effective or sustainable. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2021-01-14 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC7807230/ /pubmed/33462529 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00148-020-00818-x Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Paper
Papageorge, Nicholas W.
Zahn, Matthew V.
Belot, Michèle
van den Broek-Altenburg, Eline
Choi, Syngjoo
Jamison, Julian C.
Tripodi, Egon
Socio-demographic factors associated with self-protecting behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic
title Socio-demographic factors associated with self-protecting behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic
title_full Socio-demographic factors associated with self-protecting behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic
title_fullStr Socio-demographic factors associated with self-protecting behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Socio-demographic factors associated with self-protecting behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic
title_short Socio-demographic factors associated with self-protecting behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic
title_sort socio-demographic factors associated with self-protecting behavior during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7807230/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33462529
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00148-020-00818-x
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