Living in Boston During COVID-19: Inequities in Navigating a Pandemic

In the Summer of 2020, the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI) at Northeastern University, the Center for Survey Research (CSR) at University of Massachusetts Boston, and the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) conducted a survey that captures the experiences of 1626 Bostonians during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey provides unique insights into how experiences and challenges varied across the populations and neighborhoods of a single city—something not currently available from any other source, in Boston or otherwise. This first report on the survey concentrates on the frequency of multiple routine, or necessary, activities—including going to work, accessing food, using public transit, and exercising—that might expose individuals to infection risk. By examining how these activities were distributed by neighborhood, race, and socioeconomic status in both April and the Summer, we identify a variety of inequities in how different populations were able to mitigate risk. Most respondents reported minimizing necessary activities outside the house, especially in April, but there were stark differences in these activities between communities. Black and Latinx residents and those with lower income were more likely to physically go to work; lower-income respondents took on more risk to access food by making more total weekly trips to grocery stores and food pantries; the few that did ride transit were concentrated in majority-minority neighborhoods; and outdoor exercise was high in affluent, majority-White neighborhoods. This all points to a need for targeted ways in which we might support low-income communities during the second wave.