Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP14519
Authors: Moritz Kuhn; Christian Bayer
Abstract: COVID-19 is spreading and has reached the state of a worldwide pandemic and healthsystems are or will be tested in how they can deal with it. So far, during this earlyphase of the pandemic, outcomes in terms of case-fatality rates (CFR) differ widelyacross countries. We explore how differences in living arrangements of generationswithin families contribute to the cross country differences. We document a strongpositive correlation between countries’ CFRs and the share of working-age familiesliving with their parents. This suggest that policy needs to focus on inter-generationalsocial distance when combating this pandemic.
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JEL Codes: No JEL codes provided
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| share of working-age families living with their parents (J12) | COVID-19 case fatality rates (CFR) (Y10) |
| intergenerational contacts (D15) | COVID-19 case fatality rates (CFR) (Y10) |
| COVID-19 case fatality rates (CFR) (Y10) | higher proportion of individuals aged 30-49 living with parents (J12) |