ArticleJournal of public economics2020
Polarization and public health: Partisan differences in social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic.
Article in Journal of public economics, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 345 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
345 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 1,021 citations in OpenAlex.
- Political Polarization During Disease Outbreaks: A Meta-Analysis of Archival Survey Data From Polio to COVID-19.American journal of public health · 2026Pooled it
- Drivers of health polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review.Science advances · 2025Pooled it
- Counter-stereotypical messaging and partisan cues: Moving the needle on vaccines in a polarized United States.Science advances · 2023Trial
- Trial
- Social network exposures, political party affiliation, and perceived health risk.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2026Article
- The toll of voting in a pandemic? Regional elections and the spread of COVID-19 in Bavaria.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2026Article
- Political polarization in low- and middle-income countries.Nature human behaviour · 2026Review
- Regional and temporal patterns of partisan polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and Canada.PloS one · 2026Article
- Partisan differences in healthcare decision-making: Evidence from a vaccine experiment.PloS one · 2026Article
- Economic shock and the erosion of COVID-19 precautionary behavior in Canada during the early pandemic.PloS one · 2026Article
- A cross-sectional analysis of county-level determinants of pandemic-era policy implementation.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- The impact of state- versus county-level mask mandates on economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic.PloS one · 2026Article
- County-level mobility and sociopolitical context in the spread of COVID-19 during spring 2020.Health care management science · 2025Article
- Partisan Divergence in Fertility Change Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Florida.Population research and policy review · 2025Article
- Measuring political polarization through visible interactions between religious and non-religious citizens.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Governance in Crisis: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Global Health Governance During COVID-19.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Review
- Back to school: The effect of school visits during COVID-19 on COVID-19 outcomes.Journal of health economics · 2025Article
- Examining epidemiologic disparity across SARS-CoV-2 variant-dominant periods in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma (March 12, 2020-February 28, 2022).Journal of public health research · 2025Article
- Political identity and risk politics: Evidence from a pandemic.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2025Article
- Measuring associations among British national identification, group norms and social distancing behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic: Testing a Social Identity Model of Behavioural Associations (SIMBA).The British journal of social psychology · 2025Article
285 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We study partisan differences in Americans' response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Political leaders and media outlets on the right and left have sent divergent messages about the severity of the crisis, which could impact the extent to which Republicans and Democrats engage in social distancing and other efforts to reduce disease transmission. We develop a simple model of a pandemic response with heterogeneous agents that clarifies the causes and consequences of heterogeneous responses. We use location data from a large sample of smartphones to show that areas with more Republicans engaged in less social distancing, controlling for other factors including public policies, population density, and local COVID cases and deaths. We then present new survey evidence of significant gaps at the individual level between Republicans and Democrats in self-reported social distancing, beliefs about personal COVID risk, and beliefs about the future severity of the pandemic.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.