Cultural differences, intergenerational contacts, and the spread of Covid-19: Evidence from Swiss language regions

The Covid-19 pandemic displayed large variations between and within countries in the speed of contagion and in observed fatality rates. This work sheds light on the role of social ties in old age, exploiting the high cultural variation between German-speaking and Latin- (French- and Italian-) speaki...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Population studies 2023-03, Vol.77 (1), p.111-121
Main Authors: Mazzonna, Fabrizio, Gatti, Nicolò
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adults
Age differences
Aged
Contagion
COVID-19
COVID-19 - epidemiology
Cultural differences
Cultural factors
culture
Ethnicity
Humans
intergenerational contacts
Language
Older people
Pandemics
policy compliance
Regions
Social networks
Social organization
Switzerland
Switzerland - epidemiology
Variation
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Summary:The Covid-19 pandemic displayed large variations between and within countries in the speed of contagion and in observed fatality rates. This work sheds light on the role of social ties in old age, exploiting the high cultural variation between German-speaking and Latin- (French- and Italian-) speaking regions in Switzerland. We show that older adults in Latin-speaking regions exhibit a larger social network and more intergenerational contacts than their German-speaking counterparts. These differences are consistent with the heterogeneous incidence of the disease across language regions. Even controlling for several determinants of the contagion, we find large differences in the incidence of Covid-19 among older adults, in both the first and second waves of the pandemic. These findings also hold when exploiting language variations within the three Swiss bilingual cantons. We rule out the possibility that our results are driven by differences in canton-specific policies or in citizens' compliance with containment measures.
ISSN:0032-4728
1477-4747
DOI:10.1080/00324728.2022.2155691