Description/Abstract
States varied dramatically in their implementation of policies to mitigate coronavirus spread and provide financial safety nets to residents who may have been struggling with the pandemic’s economic fallout. These differences may have contributed to variations in COVID-19 mortality rates between states. This brief summarizes the results of a recent study examining how U.S. states’ COVID-19 policies were related to COVID-19 mortality rates from April to December 2020. The findings show that states that enacted policies restricting in-person interaction and providing economic support to residents had lower COVID-19 death rates than states without these policies. Over 29,000 lives could have been saved during the first year of the pandemic if all states applied the most restrictive in-person interaction policies and most generous economic support policies.
Document Type
Research Brief
Keywords
COVID-19, Spatial Disparities, State Policy, Health Policy
Disciplines
Demography, Population, and Ecology | Sociology
Date
2-21-2023
For More Information
Language
English
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Alyssa Kirk and Shannon Monnat for edits and feedback on a previous version of this brief. This work was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (U01DA055972) and the Syracuse University Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health.
Funder(s)
National Institute on Drug Abuse
Funding ID
U01DA055972
Recommended Citation
Sun, Yue and Bisesti, Erin. (2023). State COVID-19 Policies that Restricted In-Person Interaction and Provided Economic Support Saved Lives During the First Year of the Pandemic. Lerner Center Population Health Research Brief Series. 210. https://surface.syr.edu/lerner/210
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
