Housing Price Index, Wealth, and Protective Shield against Covid-19

Mihai Pichler (Department of Sociology, University of Bucharest, Romania)
Florin Skutnik (Department of Sociology, University of Bucharest, Romania)
Aurel Vlad (Economic Research Center, University of Cyprus, Cyprus)
Hossein Shahri (Department of Environment, Texas Tech University, USA)
Muhammad Ridwan (Universitas Islam Negeri Sumatera Utara, Indonesia)

SIASAT Journal
Vol. 6 No. 1 (2021): Siasat Journal, January

This paper aims to fill two purposes: 1) we document that housing price index between different cities have inter-correlation. This means that when the housing price in one city goes up the other city follows. However, in the case of a big city and a small city, the housing price index of small city follows the path of housing price index in the small city. 2) The housing price index is a measure of wellbeing and wealth of residents. At the onset of a pandemic, wealthy and richer people have a wealth-protective shield against the disease. We show that this is the case in the US. We document that higher housing price indexes are associated with lower confirmed case of Covid-19 and lower risks of death due to the disease.