Evaluating the effects of shelter-in-place policies during the COVID-19 pandemic

We estimate the effects of shelter-in-place (SIP) orders during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We do not find detectable effects of these policies on disease spread or deaths. We find small but measurable effects on mobility that dissipate over time. And we find small, delayed effects on unemployment. We conduct additional analyses that separately assess the effects of expanding versus withdrawing SIP orders and test whether there are spillover effects in other states. Our results are consistent with prior studies showing that SIP orders have accounted for a relatively small share of the mobility trends and economic disruptions associated with the pandemic. We reanalyze two prior studies purporting to show that SIP orders caused large reductions in disease prevalence, and show that those results are not reliable. Our results do not imply that social distancing behavior by individuals, as distinct from SIP policy, is ineffective.

Automated summary

The study revealed that shelter-in-place orders during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic had no detectable effects on disease spread or deaths, but did have small effects on mobility and unemployment. It also showed that SIP orders accounted for a relatively small share of the overall mobility trends and economic disruptions during the pandemic, and that prior studies exaggerating the impacts of SIP orders on disease prevalence were unreliable.