Researcher ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0698-981X

Graduation Year

2021

Date of Submission

4-2021

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Reader 1

Jessamyn Schaller

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2021 Mrinalini Bhushan

Abstract

Social interactions influence the way we think and act. Recent literature on COVID-19 and social connectedness explores how social interactions influence people’s perceptions of the risk from COVID-19 and their behaviors. This paper seeks to investigate how social connectedness, political ideologies, and physical interaction are associated with local COVID-19 case and death rates at the US county level. Social connectedness, as defined by (Bailey et al, 2018) measures connectedness between US counties based on Facebook friendship links. I examine whether a county’s average social connectedness to other counties, as determined by the Facebook index, has an impact on its own COVID-19 cases and deaths per 100,000 people. I also examine whether a county’s social connectedness to other counties that are in the top quartile for Republican voter percent or top quartile for COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people has a positive impact on its own COVID-19 case and death rates. My results suggest that a county’s overall social connectedness to other counties has no significant impact on its cases and deaths per 100,000. I also find that for every 10,000 unit increase in a county’s social connectedness to top quartile Republican counties, cases per 100,000 decrease by 0.00276 and deaths per 100,000 increase by 0.0000380. Additionally, for every 10,000 unit increase in a county’s social connectedness to counties in the top quartile for COVID-19 deaths per 100,000, a user county’s cases per 100,000 increase by 0.00637 and deaths per 100,000 increase by 0.000478.

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