Lockdown Policies, Social Distancing Behaviour, and Literacy: An Empirical Analysis of the Role of Literacy on the Spread of Covid-19

Abstract

The major concern of the world in the wake of COVID 19 is how to mitigate the severity of the infection with effective policies and making sure of the overall welfare of the society. Social distancing should be mandatory through strict government policies because unaware people do not internalize all its benefits. Individual’s awareness about social distancing behaviour is vital to reduce the spread of the disease given the huge externalities that social and economic activities create. The awareness of the importance of social distancing behaviour, is largely affected by the education or literacy of people as it helps public to understand the nature of a disease which, in turn, make authorities to implement stringent policies to reduce the infection. As there is notable variance across countries both in the stringency of public policies and social distancing behaviour against COVID-19, this study aims to explain the mechanism behind literacy causing the variation of in both policies and preventive behaviour of people through the lens of political and welfare economics. Data on mobility patterns, literacy rate, government response stringency policies, and some socio-economic characteristics of 188 countries were collected from multiple sources (e.g. WB, OWID, UN, Google etc) for the study. A Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) framework is used to examine the direct effect of literacy on people’s mobility pattern and the indirect effect of literacy on the mobility pattern through the intervening factor government stringency policy. Results show that literacy has significant effect both on the stringency of political policies and citizen’s social distancing behaviour aimed to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

Keywords: Externalities, Literacy, Stringency of Government Policies, Social Distancing, COVID-19