Effectiveness of Social Distancing Policies — A Comparative Study of Canadian Provinces
Public economics · January–April 2021
In this paper, we make four broad contributions. First, we provide an introduction and literature review regarding prior economic and social science research on mobility patterns, Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions, and policy responses during the first phase of the pandemic. Next, we introduce a discussion of the data sets and policies to be included in our paper that may be useful in examining the effectiveness of NPIs on human mobility patterns.
In addition, we analyze a number of data visualizations that graphically demonstrate the impact of social distancing policies on mobility. Lastly, we utilize our difference-in-difference regression equation to analyze policies during both closing and reopening regressions, in both the first and second waves. Our results indicated that the policies for restaurants, schools and recreation did have a significant impact on the decline in mobility, with an emphasis on mobility in the first wave.