How social capital helps communities weather the COVID-19 pandemic
Name
journal.pone.0245135.pdf
Size
1.03 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
03165d4c57a261ee1aa7843ca4667712
Author(s)
Makridis, Christos Andreas
Wu, Cary
Date Issued
January 2021
Journal
PLoS One
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Citation
Makridis, Christos A. and Cary Wu. (2021) How social capital helps communities weather the COVID-19 pandemic. PLoS ONE 16(1): e0245135
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Why have the effects of COVID-19 been so unevenly geographically distributed in the United States? This paper investigates the role of social capital as a mediating factor for the spread of the virus. Because social capital is associated with greater trust and relationships within a community, it could endow individuals with a greater concern for others, thereby leading to more hygienic practices and social distancing. Using data for over 2,700 US counties, we investigate how social capital explains the level and growth rate of infections. We find that moving a county from the 25th to the 75th percentile of the distribution of social capital would lead to a 18% and 5.7% decline in the cumulative number of infections and deaths, as well as suggestive evidence of a lower spread of the virus. Our results are robust to many demographic characteristics, controls, and alternative measures of social capital.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245135
