The Gendered Effects of COVID-19 on Well-being: A Household Perspective

Abstract

We investigate the causal effect of COVID-19 incidence rates on changes in subjective well-being. Specifically, we employ a household-level perspective and expect that household composition (i.e., single and multi-person households and caregiving duties for children or older adults) and affluence (i.e., housing quality and financial resources) moderate the effect of COVID-19 incidence rates, with a special focus on gender differences. Employing longitudinal household data from the Panel Labour Market and Social Security (PASS) and a difference-in-difference (DiD) approach, we find an overall negative effect. This effect is stronger for individuals with caregiving responsibilities. In contrast to our theoretical expectations, our results indicate stronger negative effects on individuals from households with high living standards and high financial resources. Strikingly, our findings indicate that the relevant negative subjective well-being changes are concentrated among women with caregiving obligations. Overall, our study underscores the need for further sociological research based on strong methodological designs.

Two Pandemic Years Greatly Reduced Young People's Life Satisfaction: Evidence from a Comparison with Pre-COVID-19 Panel Data

“…Regarding gender, the expectations are less straightforward. Research on gendered COVID-19 effects indicates that declines in wellbeing were primarily observed among women with caregiving responsibilities (Patzina et al, 2023;Zoch et al, 2022), an argument that appears to be less applicable to high school students. However, Zoch et al (2022) also demonstrated that women were more concerned about the various threats posed by the crisis and, furthermore, experienced higher levels of loneliness compared to men.…”