Unequal changes in commuting patterns across socio-economic strata in response to pandemic restrictions

TL;DR

This study analyzes how COVID-19 restrictions affected commuting patterns in Bogotá, revealing persistent socioeconomic disparities influenced by territorial and digital infrastructure factors, with lower-income groups rebounding faster post-restrictions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed, data-driven analysis of socioeconomic heterogeneity in commuting changes during the pandemic, highlighting infrastructure's role in mobility inequalities.

Findings

Commuting decreased during restrictions and recovered in 2021.

Lower-income groups rebounded faster to pre-pandemic levels.

Digital connectivity disparities significantly influence mobility patterns.

Abstract

Commuting patterns are a central component of urban dynamics and many societal activities. Exogenous shocks, such as a pandemic, might drastically modify them inducing heterogeneous variations across socioeconomic strata. Here, we quantify changes in work commuting patterns in Bogot\'a, Colombia during three different periods of the COVID-19 pandemic: pre-pandemic (2019), COVID-19 restrictions (2020), and partial reopening (2021). To this end, we use anonymized mobile phone data to infer home and work locations from recurring nighttime and weekday connection patterns, and to build daily commuting metrics. We aggregate mobility flows by administrative boundaries and socioeconomic strata. Additionally, we enrich the dataset with a range of other variables such as territorial vocation (i.e., urban versus rural), demographic information (i.e., population density) and, as a proxy for digital infrastructure quality, geolocated Speedtest measurements from Ookla. We find a marked reduction of commuting during restrictions in 2020 and a strong recovery in 2021, but with persistent heterogeneity across socioeconomic strata. Indeed, while commuting declined similarly across income groups during restrictions, groups of the population in the lower-income bracket rebounded faster to pre-pandemic levels. On the contrary, we find that groups in the higher-income bracket managed to keep higher stay-at-home behavior. Regression analyses reveal that territorial characteristics and disparities in digital connectivity significantly contribute to these differences, suggesting that infrastructure investments could help mitigate mobility-based inequalities.