Neighbourhood labour structure, lockdown policies, and the uneven spread of COVID‐19: within‐city evidence from England
利用英格兰6791个邻里数据，研究发现居民中关键工作者比例每提高10个百分点，每千人病例增加3.15例；居家工作者比例每提高10个百分点，每千人病例减少7.74例，且封锁期间效应更强，贫困地区影响更大。
Abstract We estimate the importance of local labour structure in the spread of COVID‐19 during the first year of the pandemic. We build a unique dataset across 6791 English neighbourhoods that distinguishes between people living (residents) and people working (workers) in a neighbourhood, and differentiate between jobs that can be done from home (homeworkers), jobs that likely continued on‐site (keyworkers), and non‐essential on‐site jobs. We find that a 10 percentage points increase in keyworker jobs among residents is associated with 3.15 more cases per 1000 (4.8% relative to the mean), while a 10 percentage points increase in homeworker jobs among residents is associated with a decrease of 7.74 cases per 1000 (11.8% relative to the mean). Results for the composition of workers show the same sign, but smaller magnitudes. A dynamic analysis of the monthly incidence of reported cases shows that these relationships are particularly strong during lockdown periods. These results are heterogeneous across neighbourhoods, with larger positive effect of keyworkers, and lower protective effect of homeworkers, in higher deprivation areas. We explore the role of occupation skill intensity in driving these neighbourhood differences. These findings highlight important asymmetries in the distributional impact of the policy response to COVID‐19.