A Final Report Card on the States’ Response to COVID-191

Abstract

Two and a half years ago COVID-19 spread to the United States. Following the federalism model (New State Ice Co. vs Liebmann; Cheng and Lee 2019 Cheng, Chen, and Christopher Lee. 2019. Laboratories of Democracy: Policy Experimentation under Decentralization. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 11 (3): 125–154. doi:10.1257/mic.20160257.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), the 50 states and their governors and legislators made many of their own pandemic policy choices to mitigate the damage from the virus. States learned from one another over time about what policies worked most and least effectively in terms of containing the virus while minimizing the negative effects of lockdown strategies on businesses and children.This study is an expanded and updated version of an October 2020 report card of how pandemic health, economy, and policy varied across the 50 states and the District of Columbia (Committee to Unleash Prosperity 2020 Committee to Unleash Prosperity. 2020. “Grading Our Governors: A Report Card on Reopening States’ Economies.” https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Governors-Report-Card-Updated1.pdf [Google Scholar]). It examines three variables: health outcomes, economic performance throughout the pandemic, and impact on education. We find no relationship between reduced economic activity during the pandemic and mortality.