Bowling alone or distancing together? The role of social capital in excess death rates from COVID19.

ABSTRACT: Much attention on the spread and impact of the ongoing pandemic has focused on institutional factors such as government capacity along with population-level characteristics such as race, income, and age. This paper draws on a growing body of evidence that bonding, bridging, and linking social capital - the horizontal and vertical ties that bind societies together - impact public health to explain why some U.S. counties have seen higher (or lower) excess deaths during the COVID19 pandemic than others. Drawing on county-level reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) since February 2020, we calculated the number of excess deaths per county compared to 2018. Starting with a panel dataset of county observations over time, we used coarsened exact matching to create small

SUBMITTER: Fraser T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9756415 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature