Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on subjective wellbeing in the Middle East and North Africa: A gender analysis

The pathways through which the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted population mental health are potentially gendered. Little research has explored these pathways in low- and middle-income country contexts, such as in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where socioeconomic roles are highly gendered. To address this gap, we examine the relationships between pandemic-related socioeconomic changes and subjective wellbeing in the MENA region. Our core hypothesis is that the COVID-19 pandemic affected men and women’s subjective wellbeing differently in part because these effects were mediated by gendered socioeconomic roles. We exploit multiple waves of longitudinal, nationally-representative phone survey data across Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia. The data were collected between November 2020 and August 2021 and include 32,296 observations of 20,256 unique individuals. Mental health is measured through the WHO-5 subjective wellbeing scale. Our key independent variables capture pandemic-related employment loss, income loss, experience of limitations on food access, enrollment of children in alternative schooling modalities, and receipt of formal and informal transfers. We find significantly worse subjective wellbeing for women in Egypt and Morocco during the pandemic, but not the three other countries. There were negative associations between employment and income loss during the pandemic and subjective wellbeing, but not gender-differentiated ones. In contrast, high levels of limitations on food access were associated with worse mental health for men than women. Receipt of transfers generally did not have any association with subjective wellbeing. Further research is needed into how social assistance programs implemented in response to pandemics may be designed so as to address the negative mental health consequences of such events.