Estimating COVID-19 Exposure for Religious Subgroups in the United States

This report examines how American religious groups experience different exposure risks to COVID-19 in the aggregate as a result of the geographic distribution and other demographic factors. The religious affiliation and their county-level geographic location of more than 53,000 Americans from PRRI's 2019 American Values Atlas was matched to county-level case data from the COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center of Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Because COVID-19 exposure rates vary by factors such as region of the country and density of population and religious groups are not equally across the United States, exposure risks at the aggregate level varied subgroups. For instance, White Evangelicals have had among the lowest per capita growth rates of COVID-19 infections due to to the fact that they are less likely to live in counties with high infection rates of COVID-19. In contrast, Hispanic Catholics and Hispanic Protestants tend to live in areas that are more affected by COVID-19.