Research Project

This paper seeks to find a relationship between county-level covid deaths and inequality. The unique dataset consisted of panel data with 24-month observations for several economic and demographic variables. This dataset was collapsed to perform a cross sectional fixed effects regression for the year 2020 and 2021. The regression analysis of the Covid-19 vaccine which was introduced at the beginning of 2021. By performing a cross-county analysis on 2,811 counties, this paper found a statistically significant negative relationship between county-level gini coefficients and covid deaths for 2021. The use of counties rather than states allows for lower estimation variance and better predictive performance. This regression analysis was also performed on motor vehicle and firearm fatalities to determine if inequality has a unique effect on county-level covid-19 deaths. Specific factors examined include: gini coefficients, median household income, percent unemployed, percent uninsured and general demographic controls.