  Countries and cities around the world have resorted to unprecedented mobility
restrictions to combat Covid-19 transmission. Here we exploit a natural
experiment whereby Colombian cities implemented varied lockdown policies based
on ID number and gender to analyse the impact of these policies on urban
mobility. Using mobile phone data, we find that the restrictiveness of cities'
mobility quotas (the share of residents allowed out daily according to policy
advice) does not correlate with mobility reduction Instead, we find that
larger, wealthier cities with more formalized and complex industrial structure
experienced greater reductions in mobility. Within cities, wealthier residents
are more likely to reduce mobility, and commuters are especially more likely to
stay home when their work is located in wealthy or commercially/industrially
formalized neighbourhoods..Hence, our results indicate that cities' employment
characteristics and work-from-home capabilities are the primary determinants of
mobility reduction. This finding underscores the need for mitigations aimed at
lower income/informal workers, and sheds light on critical dependencies between
socioeconomic classes in Latin American cities.
