Effectiveness of Government Policies in Controlling COVID-19 in India.

Pandey, Ashutosh; Saxena, Nitin Kishore

The purpose of this study is to find the demographic factors associated with the spread of COVID-19 and to suggest a measure for identifying the effectiveness of government policies in controlling COVID-19. The study hypothesizes that the cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 patients depends on the urban population, rural population, number of persons older than 50, population density, and poverty rate. A log-linear model is used to test the stated hypothesis, with the cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 patients up to period t as a dependent variable and demographic factors as an independent variable. The policy effectiveness indicator is calculated by taking the difference of the COVID rank of the ith state based on the predicted model and the actual COVID rank of the ith state. Our study finds that the urban population significantly impacts the spread of COVID-19. On the other hand, demographic factors such as rural population, density, and age structure do not impact the spread of COVID-19 significantly. Thus, people residing in urban areas face a significant threat of COVID-19 as compared to people in rural areas.