Covid-19 as amplifier of social inequality- SMall ARea Analyses with German neighborhood Data

In this project we seek to understand the role of disadvantaged neighborhoods with low average socio-economic status of their inhabitants. Individuals in low-income neighborhoods are often assumed to have limited possibilities to avoid contacting people infected with Sars-Cov2. This can be due to bad housing situations (e.g., more individuals live in smaller rooms), holding jobs without the option to work from home, etc. Rigorous empirical evidence on social inequality and infection rates is still lacking for Germany, mainly because small area information below the level of the districts (Kreise) is not comprehensively available. However, suggestive evidence indicates strong differences in infection rates within cities, necessitating the collection and analysis of data at much smaller regional levels.In this project, we aim to fill this gap by providing the appropriate empirical evidence, thereby adding to our understanding of how pandemics work. Additionally, our work on this project can inform targeted policy prescriptions to overcome pandemics. For instance, if we learn that disadvantaged neighborhoods play a large role in the spread of viruses, vaccination campaigns should focus on these areas, much more than currently done. This, however, is only promising as long as vaccination willingness is on an acceptable level in these neighborhoods which we also seek to analyze by the collected data.We reach our goal in three steps:1. Collect data on inner-city and inner-district infection rates and combine these with rich data on housing and socio-economic status at the same level. We also collect data on the possibility to work from home and on vaccine hesitancy.2. Analyze these data with state-of-the-art methods to learn about the role of disadvantaged neighborhoods and to draw evidence-based policy recommendations.3. Make the data on small-scale level available for scientific research on completion of the project. This will be done by the FDZ Ruhr at RWI and the LMU-ifo EBDC. Thus, we add to the research infrastructure on this topic. The FDZ Ruhr is a research data center for small scale regional data. The LMU-ifo EBDC is a research data center with a focus on providing infrastructure for big data research. Both data centers are accredited by the German DataForum RatSWD.