Background

NYC COVID Trends

It’s difficult to overstate the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic has tested the world’s public health infrastructure over the past two years. At the same time, the COVID-19 “experience” has manifested unequally -- not just country to country, but city to city, and even borough to borough.

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Explore

NYC COVID Trends

As one of the most heterogeneous urban areas in the world, New York City provides a fascinating case study into the ways socioeconomic status may be associated with, or even mediate, disparities in health outcomes.

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Project Focus

NYC COVID Trends

Knowing that socioeconomic factors have historically been associated with health outcomes, our aim was to examine relationships between a range of predictors (e.g. race/ethnicity, education, broadband internet access, household income / occupational income score, public vs. private health insurance) and COVID-19 health outcomes -- namely, hospitalizations, deaths, and vaccinations.

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Main Questions

NYC COVID Trends

Our initial questions were centered on how demographic factors in New York City trend with COVID-19 outcomes. Particularly, what are the key demographic correlates (e.g. race/ethnicity, education) of COVID-19 hospitalizations or vaccinations? Broadly, we aimed to explore the myriad relationships between predictors and COVID-19 outcomes across New York City census tracts and boroughs.

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Take Aways

NYC COVID Trends

In an analysis of correlations between predictors and outcomes across PUMA geographies, we found income to be strongly associated with COVID-19 hospitalizations (negative association), deaths (negative association), and vaccinations (positive association). We found that many indicators of socioeconomic status – including poverty level, welfare, unemployment, and food stamp utilization – seem highly negatively correlated with vaccination, but not with hospitalization and death.

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Data Sources

NYC COVID Trends

We obtained census data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS USA), COVID-19 outcome data from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH), and used a crosswalk data set from Baruch College, City University of New York - Geoportal to combine these data.

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