Affiliation:
1. Jönköping University
2. Arizona State University
3. University of Chicago
Abstract
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a debate about whether marginalized communities suffered the disproportionate brunt of the pandemic’s mortality. Empirical studies addressing this question typically suffer from statistical uncertainties and potential biases associated with uneven and incomplete reporting. We use geo-coded micro-level data for the entire population of Sweden to analyze how local neighborhood characteristics affect the likelihood of dying from COVID-19. We control for several individual and neighborhood characteristics to compare the results in specific communities to overall death patterns in Sweden during 2020. We find that individuals residing in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods were not more likely to die with COVID-19. We also find that the individuals show a generally higher probability of death from any cause in these neighborhoods. Nevertheless, ethnicity is an important explanatory factor for COVID-19 deaths for foreign-born individuals, especially from East Africa, who are more likely to pass away regardless of the residential neighborhood.
Publisher
Research Square Platform LLC
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