Impacts of Layoffs and Government Assistance on Mental Health during COVID-19: An Evidence-Based Study of the United States

Abstract

This study evaluates the impact of unemployment and government financial assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic on the working-age population’s mental health and further examines the differential impacts between urban and non-urban groups, as well as African American (AA) and non-African American groups. Based on the COVID-19 Household Impact Survey, four measures of mental health conditions (nervous, depressed, lonely, and hopeless) are constructed. Our empirical analysis applies the ordinal regression model (ordered logit model) that takes both the week and regional factors into consideration to control for potential time effects and time-invariant confounders varying across regions. The results show that government aid only mitigates the psychological symptoms for the group in non-urban areas, with no significant impacts on the urban group. On the other hand, the AA working-age group experiences similar or more favorable mental health than other ethnic groups, while government aid does not alleviate the mental pressure for the AA group. Therefore, government interventions should recognize the heterogeneity of impacts on socioeconomic groups within the target population.

Transforming the COVID-19 Threat into an Opportunity: The Pandemic as a Stage to the Sustainable Economy

“…Thus, the coordinated economic response to the COVID-19 epidemic caused the cost of living to increase more than the income and affected people's satisfaction with living standards. For example, in China, at the economic level, the gross domestic product has decreased significantly; moreover, industrial activity and the volume of transport have decreased, reducing pollution by decreasing (CO2) emissions [45].…”

Implications of COVID-19 Mitigation Policies for National Well-Being: A Systems Perspective

“…We further discarded from further analysis "Raising awareness" as it has a highly ambiguous and yet-to-be-better-understood impact (for example, its impact on "Depressive symptoms" and "Perceived health" is likely to have both a positive or negative component, and it is not clear which one determines the net result). Based on the intended scope of our study, we also discarded "Government support" as these measures rather deal with the effects of other COVID-19 policies and not with COVID-19 itself, thus being second-order measures rather than primary measures [78]. We identified the presence of a direct impact of the considered COVID-19 mitigation policies on the components of the national well-being system based on the collective assessment of this paper's co-authors supported by the literature review.…”

Interdependencies between COVID-19, Mental Illness and Living Uneasiness

“…The links between mental illness, living conditions and COVID-19 are complex and multidimensional (Chang & Park, 2020;Li & Wang, 2020;Fan & Nie, 2020;Ru, 2020;Holmes et al, 2020;Nwachukwu et al, 2020;Zhao et al, 2020;Sigurvinsdottir, Thorisdottir, & Gylfason, 2020;Sauer, Jungmann, & Witthöft, 2020;Daigle & Rudnick, 2020). However, "A large body of literature suggests that there is a negative correlation between COVID-19 and mental health status" (Fan & Nie, 2020, p. 1).…”

“…To live in a pandemic period, each individual is also required to work on his or her mental economy, to internalise the prescriptions of official bodies (e.g., World Health Organisation or national entities), to pay permanent attention to himself or herself not to forget what is required, and to have self-control of emotions (Elias, 1989(Elias, , 1990(Elias, , 2010.…”