Is education or real gdp per capita helped countries staying at home during covid-19 pandemic: Cross-section evidence?

Abstract

This paper is evaluating whether education or the standard of living in a country helped citizens to stay at home during COVID-19 pandemic. The study implemented a cross-sectional regression on Google mobility trend reports as of 29th March, 2020 which include the mobility trends in retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy, park, transit station, workplace and residential areas along wi th real GDP per capita as a proxy for standard of living and Education Index to approximate the level of education. The cross-sectional regression included 123 countries as a sample for the study. The study found that education index, park mobility trends and workplace mobility trends were significate variables in explaining the changes in residential area. However, real GDP per capita was not significate. The study concluded that standard of living is not a significate variable in changing the percentage of people who stayed at home. Moreover, education index has a negative impact on staying at home. Meaning, for each one-point increase in education index, the percentage change for citizens staying at home decreases by 0.087. Although, our result indicates that individual’s education has a negative effect, this result can be explained by the decline of political trust in demarcate government were education index is high.