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Geographic Inequality of COVID-19 in the United States

Johannes Norling, Mount Holyoke College

The COVID-19 pandemic is unevenly distributed across counties in the United States. Inequality in daily new cases and deaths fell from the start of the pandemic into summer 2020, and has since fluctuated, remaining more equal than the distribution of ethnic and racial groups but less equal than the distribution of poverty. Falling inequality within states accompanies surges in new cases and deaths, indicating that new waves of the pandemic occur at the state level. Although the 1918 influenza pandemic was nearly four times as deadly, deaths during the two pandemics were similarly unevenly distributed.

Keywords: Inequality, COVID-19, Decomposition analysis/methods, Historical demography/methods

See paper.

  Presented in Session 203. Geographic Variations in Education and Health