A Poorly Understood Disease? The Evolution of the Income Gradient in Excess Mortality Due to COVID-19 within Urban Areas
While a burgeoning literature has documented the unequal distribution of COVID-19 confirmed cases,there is still little evidence on the causal effect of the epidemic on mortality inequalities. In this pa-per, we exploit exhaustive municipality-level data in France, one of the most severely hit country in the world, to identify a persistent negative relationship between income and excess mortality withinurban areas. Over the year 2020, the poorest municipalities experienced a 42% higher increase inexcess mortality. Our analyses further reveal that the policy responses to the epidemic - including thelockdowns - play no role in this heterogeneous impact. Last, we show that both labour-market expo-sure and housing conditions are major determinants of the direct effect of the epidemic on mortalityinequalities, but that their respective role depends on the state of the epidemic and the lockdown policy