Neighborhood Isolation during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Thomas Marlow, Kinga Makovi, Bruno Abrahao

Sociological Science June 14, 2021
10.15195/v8.a9


The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted Americans’ daily mobility, which could contribute to greater social stratification. Relying on SafeGraph cell phone movement data from 2019 and 2020, we use two indices proposed by Phillips and colleagues (2019) to measure mobility inequality between census tracts in the 25 largest U.S. cities. These measures capture the importance of hubs and neighborhood isolation in a network. In the earliest phases of the pandemic, neighborhood isolation rapidly increased, and the importance of downtown central business districts declined. Mobility hubs generally regained their importance, whereas neighborhood isolation remained elevated and increased again during the latter half of 2020. Linear regression models with city and week fixed effects find that new COVID-19 cases are positively associated with neighborhood isolation changes a week later. Additionally, places with larger populations, more public transportation use, and greater racial and ethnic segregation had larger increases in neighborhood isolation during 2020.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Thomas Marlow: Center for Interacting Urban Networks (CITIES), New York University Abu Dhabi
E-mail: twm9710@nyu.edu

Kinga Makovi: Social Science Division, New York University Abu Dhabi
E-mail: km2537@nyu.edu

Bruno Abrahao: Business Division, New York University Shanghai; Global Network Assistant Professor, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University
E-mail: bd58@nyu.edu

Acknowledgments: We would like to thank Byungkyu Lee, Philipp Brandt, and Clara G. Sears for their insightful feedback on earlier drafts. This work was supported by the NYUAD Center for Interacting Urban Networks (CITIES), funded by Tamkeen under the NYUAD Research Institute Award CG001 and by the Swiss Re Institute under the Quantum Cities initiative. Bruno Abrahao was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Grant 61850410536.

  • Citation: Marlow, Thomas, Kinga Makovi, and Bruno Abrahao. 2021. “Neighborhood Isolation during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Sociological Science 8: 170-190.
  • Received: March 14, 2021
  • Accepted: April 22, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a9


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