The good, the bad and the ugly of lockdowns during Covid-19

Abstract

Amidst the rapid global spread of Covid-19, many governments enforced country-wide lockdowns, with likely severe well-being consequences. In this regard, South Africa is an extreme case suffering from low levels of well-being, but at the same time enforcing very strict lockdown regulations. In this study, we analyse the causal effect of a lockdown and consequently, the determinants of happiness during the aforementioned. A difference-in-difference approach is used to make causal inferences on the lockdown effect on happiness, and an OLS estimation investigates the determinants of happiness after lockdown. The results show that the lockdown had a significant and negative impact on happiness. In analysing the determinants of happiness after lockdown, we found that stay-at-home orders have positively impacted happiness during this period. On the other hand, other lockdown regulations such as a ban on alcohol sales, a fear of becoming unemployed and a greater reliance on social media have negative effects, culminating in a net loss in happiness. Interestingly, Covid-19, proxied by new deaths per day, had an inverted U-shape relationship with happiness. Seemingly people were, at the onset of Covid-19 positive and optimistic about the low fatality rates and the high recovery rates. However, as the pandemic progressed, they became more concerned, and this relationship changed and became negative, with peoples' happiness decreasing as the number of new deaths increased.

Social sentiment segregation: Evidence from Twitter and Google Trends in Chile during the COVID-19 dynamic quarantine strategy

“…More closely related to our work, Greyling et al [13] find that the lockdowns in South Africa have had a significant and negative impact on people's happiness. Greyling et al [14] analyze the causal effect of mandatory lockdowns on happiness in South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia and find that lockdowns negatively affect happiness.…”

“…If observable social sentiment variables are used to assess the impact of policy measures on the overall well-being of the population, it is possible that the observed effects reflect the feelings of only part of the population towards those measures. There are only a few papers that have investigated the causal effect between lockdowns and overall population well-being [ 13 – 15 ]. However, to the best of our knowledge, we are the first to take advantage of the heterogeneity on social sentiment resulting from dynamic quarantines .…”

Unnatural deaths, alcohol bans and curfews: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment during COVID-19

“…The question as to whether these two particular responses (curfews and restrictions on sale of alcohol) had an effect on reducing unnatural deaths and trauma unit admissions in SA is important in its own right, and has generated substantial debate and commentary due to its economic impacts. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Recently, media attention [9,10] has been given to a study funded by an alcohol-industry group that asserts that the ban on alcohol sales and consumption had no effect in reducing trauma unit admissions, of which unnatural deaths are the extreme end of the continuum of trauma injuries. This contradicts another analysis that ascribes a significant decrease in unnatural deaths to the implementation of a sudden unexpected prohibition on alcohol sales in mid-July 2020 and a negligible impact of curfew duration.…”

COVID-19 pandemic and stability of stock market—A sectoral approach

“…The COVID-19 pandemic is a new phenomenon, therefore the studies on it are still new but quickly expanding. The issue of COVID-19 was taken up primarily in medicine and pharmacy [12][13][14][15][16], but shortly afterwards it started to be a subject of research in many other disciplines such as health sciences [17,18], psychology [19,20] or physics and mathematics [21]. In the field of economic sciences, especially finance, the achievements regarding COVID-19 are getting more and more common and refer mostly to the consequences of the lockdowns.…”