The Strength of Family Ties and Aging-Sensitive Epidemics

by Nicoletta Balbo, Francesco Billari, Alessia Melegaro and Adriana Manna

Social contacts play a crucial role in the spread of infectious diseases, and social contacts across generations magnify their effects in the case of aging-sensitive infectious diseases, such as COVID19, which disproportionately impact the elderly. In this project the authors identify contexts and populations that are potentially more vulnerable using social survey data on co-residential patterns and intergenerational contacts, as well as data on “social mixing patterns” by age and evaluate how these can affect the transmission dynamics of COVID19 infection using epidemiological compartmental models.

Publications: 

• Balbo N., Billari F.C., Melegaro A., "The Strength of Family Ties and Covid-19", Context - Sociology for the public, blog.