Urbana Campus Research Calendar (OVCRI)

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Fall Seminar Series - "Structural Foundations of the Coronavirus Pandemic in the USA"

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
Department of Sociology
Virtual
wifi event
Date
Aug 28, 2020   9:00 am  
Speaker
Tim F. Liao
Registration
Zoom Link
Views
142
Originating Calendar
Department of Sociology

Abstract: This project studies the racial, economic, and political structural foundations of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 in the USA, especially the impact of the unequal distributions of race/ethnic compositions and income inequality in the counties across the country. There are three major data sources for the study. The number of confirmed cases and deaths data collected by the county public health departments for the first 200 days of the pandemic, the race/ethic composition and the total population data are from the US Census Bureau, and the income inequality information draws from the most recent available round of the American Community Survey. The unit of analysis is the county; there are 3,142 counties in the combined dataset for the analysis. The analysis has two parts, focusing on the cumulative incidence rate and the cumulative mortality rate, respectively, with black population percentage, Hispanic population percentage, and a Gini income inequality measure as the main explanatory factors and the age structure of a county and the quality of its healthcare as control variables. Also included as a structural factor is whether a county is in a state with a Republican (vs. Democratic) governor. The findings suggest that the black and Hispanic population composition and the level of income inequality in a county are all positive predictors of Coronavirus infection incidence and mortality. In addition, counties in a state with a Republican governor and counties with a great proportion of Trump voters in 2016 tend to have a higher incidence rate.

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