  In response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, governments
have encouraged and ordered citizens to practice social distancing,
particularly by working and studying at home. Intuitively, only a subset of
people have the ability to practice remote work. However, there has been little
research on the disparity of mobility adaptation across different income groups
in US cities during the pandemic. The authors worked to fill this gap by
quantifying the impacts of the pandemic on human mobility by income in Greater
Houston, Texas. In this paper, we determined human mobility using
pseudonymized, spatially disaggregated cell phone location data. A longitudinal
study across estimated income groups was conducted by measuring the total
travel distance, radius of gyration, number of visited locations, and per-trip
distance in April 2020 compared to the data in a baseline. An apparent
disparity in mobility was found across estimated income groups. In particular,
there was a strong negative correlation ($\rho$ = -0.90) between a traveler's
estimated income and travel distance in April. Disparities in mobility
adaptability were further shown since those in higher income brackets
experienced larger percentage drops in the radius of gyration and the number of
distinct visited locations than did those in lower income brackets. The
findings of this study suggest a need to understand the reasons behind the
mobility inflexibility among low-income populations during the pandemic. The
study illuminates an equity issue which may be of interest to policy makers and
researchers alike in the wake of an epidemic.
