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. 2021 Oct;64(5):804-830.
doi: 10.1177/07311214211041967.

Racial/Ethnic Residential Segregation and the First Wave of SARS-CoV-2 Infection Rates: A Spatial Analysis of Four U.S. Cities

Kathryn Freeman Anderson  1 , Angelica Lopez  2 , Dylan Simburger  3
Affiliations

Racial/Ethnic Residential Segregation and the First Wave of SARS-CoV-2 Infection Rates: A Spatial Analysis of Four U.S. Cities

Kathryn Freeman Anderson et al. Sociol Perspect. 2021 Oct.

Abstract

Previous research has linked racial/ethnic residential segregation to a number of poor health conditions, including infectious disease. Here, we examine how racial/ethnic residential segregation is related to the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. We examine infection rates by zip code level segregation in four major cities across the U.S.: New York City, Chicago, Houston, and San Diego. We also include a number of area-level Census variables in order to analyze how other factors may help account for the infection rate. We find that both Black and Latino residential clustering are significantly and positively related to a higher SARS-CoV-2 infection rate across all four cities, and that this effect is strong even when accounting for a number of other social conditions and factors that are salient to the transmission of infectious disease. As a result, we argue that neighborhood-level racial/ethnic patterning may serve as an important structural mechanism for disparities in SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; health inequality; race/ethnicity; residential segregation.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Map of SARS-CoV-2 infections over black and Latino clustering scores in zip code tabulation areas of New York City. Note. SARS-CoV-2 = severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Map of SARS-CoV-2 infections over black and Latino clustering scores in zip code tabulation areas of Chicago. Note. SARS-CoV-2 = severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Map of SARS-CoV-2 infections over black and Latino clustering scores in zip code tabulation areas of Houston. Note. SARS-CoV-2 = severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Map of SARS-CoV-2 infections over Latino clustering scores in zip code tabulation areas of San Diego. Note. SARS-CoV-2 = severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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