Vulnerable Populations

Vulnerable Populations subtopics include: racial and ethnic disparities and economic inequality; geography of COVID-19; gender and family; disability and age; homelessness; and informal settlements.

Racial and Ethnic Disparities and Economic Inequality

Reports, Studies, and Articles

Traffic deaths jump for Black Americans who couldn't afford to stay home during Covid
June 21, 2021. Traffic deaths soared in 2020 despite Americans driving less due to the pandemic, and Black Americans bore a disproportionate share of the increase in fatalities, writes Matt McFarland on CNN.com.

Wealthy residents and workers jump vaccine queue in India's financial hub
June 16, 2021. In Mumbai, housing complexes and firms hold vaccination camps for residents and staff amid shortage while informal workers are left out, writes Roli Srivastava.

New York's Second Chance
June 8, 2021. Since the pandemic struck, no city in America had experienced more death or economic devastation than New York, writes Jonathan Mahler in the New York Times Magazine. It felt like a tragedy that would never end, and the disparity in the suffering between white New Yorkers and Black and Latino New Yorkers had revealed another, more intractable crisis: the ever-growing inequalities in wealth, well-being and opportunity that had come to define every aspect of life in the city Now, finally, it was possible to imagine an end to the suffering and maybe even the beginning of a new era. Across the centuries, New York City had thrown together people from every class, constituency, race and religion; it was, at its best, a place that welcomed everyone, and where anyone could make it, the teeming embodiment of American pluralism. To truly heal from the pandemic, it would need to reaffirm those values.

Urban environments and COVID-19 in three Eastern states of the United States
Available online March 12, 2021. Lee et al find that in NY, NJ, and CT, COVID-19 outcomes were generally highest in areas with high population density, and this pattern was evident in the early period of epidemic. Among the area-level demographic variables, the percentage of Black or Hispanic residents showed the strongest positive association with COVID-19 outcomes. Higher risk of COVID-19 outcomes was also associated with higher percentage of overcrowded households, uninsured people, and income inequality. The percent elderly, sex ratio (the ratio of males to females), and greenness were negatively associated with risk of COVID-19 outcomes.

As Luxury Rents Drop, Low-Income Tenants Pay More
With increasing pressure on the nation's supply of affordable housing, low- and middle-income renters are seeing their rents go up while higher-quality apartments drop prices to lure back remote workers. March 29, 2021.

Who Is Still Travelling by Public Transport during COVID-19? Socioeconomic Factors Explaining Travel Behaviour in Stockholm Based on Smart Card Data
Paper posted to SSRN September 8, 2020 by Erik Almlöf, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH); Isak Rubensson, Region Stockholm; and Matej Cebecauer, KTH; Erik Jenelius, KTH, analysing public transport use of 1.8 million smart-card holders in Stockholm, Sweden, linking socioeconomic data with the probability to stop travelling.

The Social Divide of Social Distancing: Lockdowns in Santiago during the COVID-19 Pandemic
SSRN paper posted September 12, 2020 by Aldo Carranza, Stanford University; Marcel Goic, University of Chile - Industrial Engineering; Eduardo Lara, University of Chile; Marcelo Olivares, University of Chile - Engineering Department; Gabriel Y. Weintraub, Stanford Graduate School of Business; Julio Covarrubia, Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones (ENTEL); Cristian Escobedo, University of Chile; Natalia Jara, Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones (ENTEL); and Leonardo J. Basso, Universidad de Chile - Civil Engineering Department, on the impact of shelter-in-place and lockdown measures in Santiago, Chile, using granular geo-located cell-phone data to capture adherance. The study finds the impact of social distancing measures and lockdowns on mobility is highly heterogeneous and dependent on socioeconomic level.

Assessing the Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on US Mortality: A County-Level Analysis
Pre-print posted September 26 on medRxiv, by Andrew C Stokes, Boston University School of Public Health; Dielle J Lundberg, Boston University School of Public Health; Katherine Hempstead, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Irma T Elo, University of Pennsylvania; and Samuel H Preston University of Pennsylvania, reporting on a study that finds COVID-19 deaths are likely underestimated, especially among counties with high income inequality, low homeownership, and high percentages of Black residents, showing a pattern related to socioeconomic disadvantage and structural racism

Inequality Consequences of the COVID-19 Recession
Paper posted August 4, 2020 to SSRN that examines how changes in the labor market due to the COVID-19 recession affect earnings inequality in the US, with comparisons to previous recessions, by Loujaina Abdelwahed, The Cooper Union of the Advancement of Science and Art; Todd Czurylo, University of Illinois at Chicago; Cole Campbell, University of Illinois at Chicago

Pre-existing Economic Conditions and Positive COVID-19 Cases in New York City
Paper posted August 4, 2020 to SSRN that finds that zip codes with higher concentrations of residents living in crowded living quarters, employees in high-risk occupations, and employees commuting more than half an hour were associated with higher infection rates, by Prabal K. De, City College of New York- CUNY Graduate Center, and Taylor Price, University of Connecticut

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Covid-19: Evidence from Six Large Cities
IZA Discussion paper posted to SSRN July 29, 2020 that reports on a study of racial and ethnic disparities in confirmed COVID-19 cases across Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, San Diego, and St. Louis at the ZIP-code level. By Joseph Benitez, University of Kentucky, Charles Courtemanche, University of North Carolina (UNC) at Greensboro - Department of Economics, and Aaron Yelowitz, University of Kentucky - Department of Economics.

Coronavirus Interim Racial Equity Plan
The Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH) plan outlining what the City knows about racial and ethnic inequities and COVID-19 and what it is doing and planning to reduce those disparities, released July 27, 2020

NIDS-CRAM Synthesis Report Wave 1
The first of five reports from the National Income Dynamics Study–Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM), released on July 15, 2020, indicating that employment has declined substantially and that the effects of this are largest for the most disadvantaged. The synthesis report presents an overview of 11 NIDS- CRAM Working Papers

Color of Inequality Part 5: Health Disparities in Communities of Color
Research posted July 8, 2020 in the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia’s Leading Indicator series The Color of Inequality on how structural racism and systemic barriers in the US healthcare system are putting Philadelphia's communities of color at greater risk of chronic disease, lower life expectancy, and COVID-19

Under Threat & left Out: NYC’s Immigrants and the Coronavirus Crisis
Center for an Urban Future report, published June 2020, finding that New York City’s immigrants are suffering the deepest economic losses from the COVID-19 crisis but have benefited the least from government relief efforts

Perspectives from Main Street: The Impact of COVID-19 on Low- to Moderate-Income Communities
The Federal Reserve System’s June 2020 report base on a survey of representatives of nonprofits, financial institutions, government agencies, and other community organizations to better understand the specific effects of COVID-19 on low- to moderate-income communities

Poor people respond differently to stay-at-home orders. Here’s what the data says
June 23, 2020 World Bank Sustainable Cities blog post by Samuel Paul Fraiberger, Nicholas Jones, and Nancy Lozano Gracia reporting on findings from a study in Jakarta, Indonesia that used GPS location data

Virus exposes sharp economic divide: College vs. non-college
June 6, 2020 Associated Press article reporting that the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately impacting workers without a college degree

COVID-19’s effect on minority-owned small businesses in the United States
May 27, 2020 McKinsey article reporting that the COVID-120 crisis will disproportionately affect minority-owned small businesses, which employ more than 8.7 million people and are concentrated in the industries most immediately affected by the pandemic

Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2019, Featuring Supplemental Data from April 2020
The 7th annual report by the Federal Reserve System, released May 14, 2020, that finds that financial conditions changed dramatically for people who experienced job loss or reduced hours during March 2020 as the spread of COVID-19 intensified in the United States.

A Terrible Price: The Deadly Racial Disparities of Covid-19 in America
April 29, 2020 New York Times Magazine article

How to reduce the racial gap in COVID-19 deaths
April 10, 2020 Brookings FixGov blog post by Rashawn Ray with policy recommendations for reducing the likelihood of exposure, contraction, and death from COVID-19 for Black Americans

Why are Blacks dying at higher rates from COVID-19?
April 9, 2020 Brookings FixGov blog post by Rashawn Ray on the structural conditions that have led to the racial gap in coronavirus deaths

The Coronavirus Class Divide in Cities
April 7, 2020 CityLab article by Richard Florida

*Socioeconomic Mobility in the United States: New Evidence and Policy Lessons
Chapter by Raj Chetty in Shared Prosperity in America’s Communities (Penn Press 2016), edited by Susan M. Wachter and Lei Ding

Webinars and Podcasts

*Smart City Technologies for Health and Equity: Examples from NYC
An October 29, 2020 conversation between John Paul Farmer, Penn IUR Scholar and Chief Technology Officer, City of New York, and Allison Lassiter, Penn IUR Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, Weitzman School of Design on how smart city technologies are currently being used to bridge the digital divide exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Op-Eds and Think Pieces

New York City Can’t Just Gentrify Its Way Back to Normal
Published June 4, 2021. Updated June 14, 2021. Outdoor cafes and to-go cocktails are scenes from a privileged lockdown. Gina Bellafante of the New York Times asks what the plan is for neighborhoods that were struggling before Covid.

Food security in uncertain times
June 1 editorial in The Lancet Planetary Health on how the COVID-19 pandemic further exposes the inequalities inherent in our global political and economic systems

The Cities We Need
May 11, 2020 New York Times op-ed on how to save America’s cities, which used to be engines of opportunity and growth, by breaking down economic barriers

COVID-19 Puts Structural Racism On Full Display — Will We Finally Do Something to Correct It?
May 11, 2020 opinion piece in Next City by Stephen Gray on how planners and policymakers can work toward antiracist policies

The covid-19 racial disparities could be even worse than we think
April 23, 2020 op-ed by Marc Morial in The Washington Post

Who Will Prosper After the Plague?
April 13, 2020 article by Joel Kotkin inTablet predicting greater concentrations of power and wealth, drawing parallels to the aftermath of the 14th century plague that ravaged Europe

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Geography of COVID-19

Reports, Studies, and Articles

How gay neighborhoods used the traumas of HIV to help American cities fight coronavirus
June 24, 2021. Daniel Baldwin Hess and Alex Bitterman find that the lessons learned and trauma experienced early in the HIV/AIDS pandemic helped urban gay areas respond to COVID-19 quickly and effectively – especially in the face of early federal government paralysis.

Your Neighborhood May Influence Your COVID-19 Risk, Drexel Study Suggests
Researchers from Drexel University finds that in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, markers of the pandemic’s impact – testing rates, positivity ratio (cases among total tests), case rates by overall population and deaths – are clustered in neighborhoods, with low-income and predominantly minority communities experiencing worse outcomes than wealthier and predominantly white neighborhoods. March 29, 2021.

On the Strange Case of the Case Fatality Rate
July 2, 2020 Marron Institute Research Note by Shlomo (Solly) Angel examining variability over time as well as among states in the CFR from Covid-19

Bearing the Brunt: Where NYC's Hard-Hit Sector Workkers Live
May 2020 Center for an Urban Future report on the pandemic's uneven impact on workers and neighborhoods

COVID-19 and the unequal surge in mortality rates in Massachusetts, by city/town and ZIP Code measures of poverty, household crowding, race/ethnicity, and racialized economic segregation
Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies Working Paper, May 9, 2020, by Jarvis T. Chen, Pamela D. Waterman, and Nancy Krieger

Not the Great Equalizer: Which Neighborhoods Are Most Economically Vulnerable to the Coronavirus Crisis?
April 2020 Initiative for a Competitive Inner City research brief with interactive Coronavirus Economic Vulnerability Map

States need coronavirus data to make timely decisions. What they share with the public varies widely.
April 27, 2020 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer reporting on how coronavirus data related to geography, race and ethnicity, and nursing homes varies among states (report compares Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Washington)

The Geography of COVID-19 Growth in the US: Counties and Metropolitan Areas
An examination of the determinants of how rapidly the coronavirus grows once it has been seeded within a MSA or county, by William C. Wheaton and Anne Kinsella Thompson, posted April 7, 2020 to SSRN

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Gender and Family

Reports, Studies, and Articles

The Neglected Ones: Time at Home During COVID-19 and Child Maltreatment
Paper posted August 16, 2020 to SSRN presenting early evidence regarding how staying at home due to COVID19 affects child maltreatment, including differences between metropolitan and non-metropolitan–counties. By Lindsey Bullinger, Georgia Institute of Technology, Kerri Raissian, University of Connecticut, Megan Feely, University of Connecticut School of Social Work, and William Schneider, University of Illinois.

COVID-19 and Women’s Well-Being
July 1, 2020 paper posted to SSRN by Adan Silverio-Murillo, School of Government, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Lauren Hoehn-Velasco, Georgia State University - Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Jose Roberto Balmori de la Miyar, University Anahuac Mexico - Business and Economics School, and Abel Rodriguez, Tecnologico de Monterrey examining whether Mexico City’s COVID-19 stay-at-home order affected mental health, intimate partner violence (IPV), and household decisions.

Sheltering in Place and Domestic Violence: Evidence from Calls for Service during COVID-19
Paper documenting the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on police calls for service for domestic violence, by Emily Leslie and Riley Wilson, Brigham Young University, posted to SSRN May 17, 2020

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Disability and Age

Reports, Studies, and Articles

How Deadly Is Financial Leverage? Evidence from Care Homes during the COVID-19 Crisis
Data shows highly levered care homes have a death rate twice as high as unlevered care homes at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Posted to SSRB January 25, 2022.

COVID-19 and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Guidance
UN Office of the High Commission on Human Rights (OHCHR) guidance document, April 29, 2020

Webinars and Podcasts

Equity and Access in Times of Pandemic webinar series
Cities for All webinar series convening city leaders, industry partners, academia and grass roots oragnizations to coordinate and prioritize the needs of people with disabilities and older persons in cities heavily affected by COVID-19

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Homelessness

Reports, Studies, and Articles

Tents in Seattle increased by more than 50% after COVID pandemic began, survey says
A new study from researchers at Seattle Pacific University and University of Washington finds that the number of people living in tent encampments in the city has increased during the pandemic. April 3, 2021.

Estimated Emergency and Observational/Quarantine Capacity Need for the US Homeless Population Related to COVID-19 Exposure by County; Projected Hospitalizations, Intensive Care Units and Mortality
April 3, 2020 report by Dennis P Culhane, Dan Treglia, and Kenneth Steif, University of Pennsylvania; Randall Kuhn, University of California Los Angeles; and Thomas Byrne, Boston University

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Informal Settlements

Reports, Studies, and Articles

As COVID-19 ravages India, a slum succeeds in turning the tide
May 12, 2021. Though slum dwellers are generally more vulnerable to disease, Dharavi has defied expectations with their coronavirus response, writes Roli Srivastava.

Asia's largest urban slum-Dharavi: A global model for management of COVID-19
April 2021. This study authored by Jyotsna Kaushal and Pooja Mahajan presents an interpretation of the transmission and control of COVID-19 pandemic in one of the largest urban slum area of Asia. According to the authors, Dharavi (Mumbai) set a role model for the entire world to curb the spread of pandemic with zero possibility of social distancing. The 4-Ts (Tracing, Tracking, Testing, and Treating) approach was adopted in coordination with Municipal Corporation, locals doctors and different NGO's in Dharavi.

Seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in Slums Versus Non-slums in Mumbai, India
November 13, 2020 article by Anup Malani, Daksha Shah, Gagandeep Kang, Gayatri Nair Lobo, Jayanthi Shastri, Manoj Mohanan, et al. in The Lancet estimating prevalence in six slum and non-slum communities across three wards (one each from the three zones) of Mumbai, India.

In Africa, lack of coronavirus data raises fears of 'silent epidemic'
July 8, 2020 Reuters article

COVID-19 Turns Spotlight on Slums
June 10, 2020 World Bank article

The reason billions can’t safely shelter at home? Housing.
World Bank Sustainable Cities blog post June 10, 2020 describing the impossibility of following health recommendations for those with substandard housing, and outlining a data-informed strategy for upgrading housing

Cities are on the front lines of COVID-19
World Bank Sustainable Cities blog post May 12, 2020 outlining three stages of disaster response and how cities can support the most vulnerable, in particular the poor and those living in informal settlements, as cities recover and adapt

Why COVID-19 poses a particular threat in the world's slums
May 11, 2020 article from the World Economic Forum

Tackling Inequality in Cities is Essential for Fighting COVID-19
April 14. 2020 World Resources Institute blog post on urban inequality, informality, and improving city resilience

Understanding the different characteristics of African cities will be crucial in responding effectively to COVID-19 on the continent
March 2020 article from International Science Council by Buyana Kareem on how appropriate responses to COVID-19 in Africa demand a nuanced understanding of the physical, economic and social factors that shape livelihoods in different African cities

Coronavirus in the world’s slums and shanty-towns
The New Humanitarian interview with Robert Muggah published April 1, 2020

*Urban Governance and Development of Informality in China and India
Chapter by Arthur Acolin, Shahana Chattaraj, and Susan M. Wachter in Slums: How Informal Real Estate Markets Work, edited by Eugenie L. Birch, Shahana Chattaraj, and Susan M. Wachter

*Making a Difference in the Predominantly Informal City
Chapter by David Gouverneur in in Slums: How Informal Real Estate Markets Work, edited by Eugenie L. Birch, Shahana Chattaraj, and Susan M. Wachter

Op-Eds and Think Pieces

No Urban Myth: Building Inclusive and Sustainable Cities in the Pandemic Recovery
June 18, 2020 World Bank blog post by Somik Lall and Sameh Wahba

COVID-19 and Water Sanitation Issues in Kibera
Message from HUD’s PD&R senior leadership in PD&R Edge

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