Location Data Reveals Inequities of Coronavirus Response

Location data is revealing the inequities of the coronavirus pandemic, as shown by who has the ability to stay home, and who has to go about their normal business and hope for the best while trying to hold down jobs and take care of families and themselves.

In cities across America, many lower-income workers continue to move around, while those who make more money are staying home and limiting their exposure to the coronavirus, according to smartphone location data analyzed by The New York Times.

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Denise Lu, and Gabriel J.X. Dance created this interactive feature to use words and graphics to illustrate the reality described above. 

Although people in all income groups are moving less than they did before the crisis, wealthier people are staying home the most, especially during the workweek. Not only that, but in nearly every state, they began doing so days before the poor, giving them a head start on social distancing as the virus spread, according to aggregated data from the location analysis company Cuebiq, which tracks about 15 million cellphone users nationwide daily.

For more on the ability of mobile phones to track locations of both the healthy and the infected during the pandemic, see the Social Distancing Scorecard by Unacast, which has shifted since shared by Planetizen. Also see coverage of Google's efforts to report movement data, as reported by Steven Overly.