COVID-19: Testing Inequality in New York City

17 Pages Posted: 8 May 2020

See all articles by Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé

Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Ken Teoh

Columbia University

Martín Uribe

Columbia University - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: April 2020

Abstract

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.

Keywords: Coronavirus, Covid-19 testing, Gini coefficient, health, income distribution, inequality, Lorenz curves

JEL Classification: I14, R1

Suggested Citation

Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie and Teoh, Ken and Uribe, Martin, COVID-19: Testing Inequality in New York City (April 2020). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP14673, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3594306

Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe (Contact Author)

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Ken Teoh

Columbia University

Martin Uribe

Columbia University - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences - Department of Economics ( email )

420 W. 118th Street
1022 International Affairs Building, MC 3308
New York, NY 10027
United States
212-851-4008 (Phone)
212-854-8059 (Fax)

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
0
Abstract Views
211
PlumX Metrics