1,098
edits
Changes
no edit summary
The uneven incidence of the pandemic amongst the different social groups may be explained by certain social conditions (e.g. employment, working conditions, housing, etc.) as well as by previous pathologies / comorbidities (e.g. obesity, diabetes and others). Different degrees of mobility reductions may also be a relevant explanatory factor. People with higher income tend to work in more flexible sectors that are able to implement home office. By contrast, lower-income groups are usually employed in manual jobs and fragile working environments and find more difficult to reduce mobility. This is also confirmed by mobility data on public rail transport in relation to the average income, which are displayed on the map together with the access stations (Checa ''et al.'' 2020).
The amount of people using public rail transport in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona dropped sharply from February to June 2020, as depicted on the graph on the ''[[:File:Barcelona Evolution -of -mobility -on -public -rail -transport -by -income quintile-quintiles.-Metropolitan-Area-of-Barcelona 2020 statisticalgraph 18019 eng.jpg|Evolution of mobility on public rail transport by income quintile]]''. The decline began the week before the state of alarm and speeded up after 14 March 2020. The drop was particularly sharp and quick in areas where the disposable income was higher, whilst it was weaker in lower-income areas. Thus, in the third week of lockdown, the average amount of passengers at stations located in higher-income areas had reduced to 4.9% of the figures registered in the previous months (measured in average amount of tickets used). The census sections with the lowest income also registered a sharp reduction in the amount of passengers, yet not as deep, since figures were reduced to 14.3% of those registered in January and February 2020.
Neighbourhoods within the richest decile in the city of Barcelona reduced mobility to just 5.7% of the figures registered prior to the pandemic. By contrast, the use of rail transport (metropolitan railway, underground, tram...) fell to 13.8% of pre-pandemic figures in neighbourhoods within the poorest decile. In short, mobility stayed clearly higher in lower-income neighbourhoods than in higher-income ones throughout the first wave of the pandemic.
