Prof’s public health research reaches U.S. Congress

Assistant Professor Taylor Wright was recently cited in the Economic Report of the President, transmitted to the United States Congress in January 2025 by President Joe Biden before he left office.

When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit, Wright was curious about possible indirect effects of policy changes related to lockdowns. In 2021, with co-authors Abel Brodeur and Nik Cook, he published “On the Effects of COVID-19 Safer-at-Home Policies on Social Distancing, Car Crashes and Pollution,” in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.

In the paper, the authors contrasted counties in the U.S. that used different approaches to public health measures implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic, studying rates of air pollution and car collisions in different locations both during the policy and after measures such as lockdowns were lifted.

“We saw a 25 per cent reduction in car crashes and a 25 per cent reduction in pollution levels, with both pollution and collisions were lower in places that had more remote work,” says Wright. “We also saw that pollution stayed persistently lower than it was before in those areas after lockdowns were lifted, but car collision rebounded a bit after mobility was reintroduced.”

Four years later, the findings were used by The White House to inform future discussions on the shifting labour landscape.