Covid-19: Testing Inequality in New York City / Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé, Ken Teoh, Martín Uribe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schmitt-Grohé, Stephanie.

Contributor:

Teoh, Ken.

Uribe, Martín.

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w27019.

NBER working paper series no. w27019

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2020.

Summary:

Motivated by reports in the media suggesting unequal access to Covid-19 testing across incomes, we analyze zip-code level data on the number of Covid-19 tests, test results, and income per capita in New York City. We find that the number of tests administered is evenly distributed across income levels. In particular, the test distribution across income levels is significantly more egalitarian than the distribution of income itself: The ten percent of the city's population living in the richest zip codes received 11 percent of the Covid-19 tests and 29 percent of the city's income. The ten percent of the city's population living in the poorest zip codes received 10 percent of the tests but only 4 percent of the city's income. At the same time, we find significant disparity in the fraction of tests that come back negative for the Covid-19 disease across income levels: moving from the poorest zip codes to the richest zip codes is associated with an increase in the fraction of negative Covid-19 test results from 38 to 65 percent.

Notes:

April 2020.

Print version record

ISBN:

9786555760880