Everyday mobility as a vulnerability marker: The uneven reaction to coronavirus lockdown in Russia

Abstract

Spatial inequality can lead to unexpected consequences, especially in large countries like Russia. State officials’ attempts to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic led to a national lockdown, which was supposed to dramatically reduce the daily mobility of people and therefore the likelihood of infection. At the same time, the Russian government did not introduce an emergency regime, and the measures to support the population and business were criticized by experts as insufficient. Using daily data on mobility in 308 municipalities in Russia, we examined the unevenness of the decline in the level of mobility depending on the level of wages. The results show that the poorer the municipality, the smaller was the mobility decline, that is, the poorer areas were more vulnerable to the pandemic risks. The work also illustrates the larger amplitude of mobility in rich versus poor areas during the period of exiting from the lockdown.