%0 Report
        %A Liu, Yanyan
%A Ma, Shuang
%A Mu, Ren
        %T Uneven Recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic: Post-lockdown Human Mobility Across Chinese Cities
        %D 2021
        %8 2021 Mar
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 14187
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp14187
        %X How quickly can we expect human mobility to resume to pre-pandemic levels after lockdowns? Does pandemic severity affect the speed of post-lockdown recovery? Using real-time cross-city human mobility data from China and a difference-in-difference-in-differences framework, we find that mobility in most cities resumed to normal six weeks after reopening. In contrast, the epicenter cities, those with the worst outbreaks, were slow to recover; twelve weeks after reopening, mobility had not returned to the pre-pandemic levels. We provide suggestive evidence that relatively undiminished pandemic concerns may have slowed down mobility recovery in the epicenter region. Our findings imply that a severe pandemic experience impedes post-lockdown mobility recovery. From a policy perspective, this study suggests that it is important to successfully contain the pandemic to achieve a faster post-lockdown recovery.
        %K COVID-19
%K population mobility
%K post-lockdown
%K China