What do the vaccination rates look like in the largest U.S. cities? In these cities, how do the characteristics of individuals in neighborhoods with low vs. high vaccination rates differ?
To answer this question, a paper by Sacarny and Daw (2021) use data from 9 large US cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, and Dallas. Specifically, they gather data on COVID-19 vaccination and death rates for these cites from health authority websites and sociodemographic information from the American Community Survey (ACS).
They find that neighborhood with high vaccination rates have: (i) more Whites and Asians and fewer Blacks and Hispanics, (ii) more people who received a bachelor’s degree or higher, and (iii) higher income levels, (iv) a higher share of individuals aged 65 and above. Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 deaths are lower in the highly vaccinated neighborhoods in these cities.
