We study how pre-pandemic inequalities in America influenced social distancing over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Richer counties tended to see more protective mobility responses in the initial (pre-pharmaceutical) phase, but less protective responses later. Near linearity of this income...

"Prevailing measures of relative poverty put an implausibly high weight on relative deprivation, such that measured poverty does not fall when all incomes grow at the same rate. This stems from the (implicit) assumption in past measures that very poor people incur a negligible cost of social...