The COVID-19 Pandemic – connections to and impacts on rural migration and mobility

Keywords: migration, mobility, COVID 19, rural communities
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 57

Abstract

During the spring and summer of 2020, COVID-19 cases spread at astonishing rates both between and within communities. In response, officials quickly began issuing stay-at-home orders and travel restrictions greatly altering both how and where people lived. This two-part paper draws on nonconventional data sources to explore the connections between the spread of COVID-19 across space, migration between places, and mobility within places. Using past county-to-county migration data along with mobile phone data showing daily levels of inter-county mobility provided by Google, part I sheds light on the spread of coronavirus infections between and within communities and highlights how rural areas with well-established migration linkages to metropolitan regions saw the earliest arrival of COVID-19 cases. Once present within a rural community, infections spread more slowly in areas where populations reduced their day-to-day mobility to the greatest extent. Part II utilizes data on the home location of mobile phone devices provided by SafeGraph to document how populations appear to have shifted down the urban hierarchy as the pandemic continued from spring 2020 into summer and fall. Combined these results have implications for policy responses when faced with future crises as well as some of the longer-term shifts of population distribution stemming from the pandemic.