IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bon/boncrc/crctr224_2021_271.html

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Mental Health: Disentangling Crucial Channels

Author

Listed:
  • Bettina Siflinger
  • Michaela Paffenholz
  • Sebastian Seitz
  • Moritz Mendel
  • Hans-Martin von Gaudecker

Abstract

Since the start of the CoViD-19 pandemic, a major source of concern has been its effect on mental health. Using pre-pandemic information and five customized questionnaires in the Dutch LISS panel, we investigate how mental health in the working population has evolved along with the most prominent risk factors associated with the pandemic. Overall, mental health decreased sharply with the onset of the first lockdown but recovered fairly quickly. In December 2020, levels of mental health are comparable to those in November 2019. We show that perceived risk of infection, labor market uncertainty, and emotional loneliness are all associated with worsening mental health. Both the initial drop and subsequent recovery are larger for parents of children below the age of 12. Among parents, the patterns are particularly pronounced for fathers if they shoulder the bulk of additional care. Mothers' mental health takes a particularly steep hit if they work from home and their partner is designated to take care during the additional hours.

Suggested Citation

  • Bettina Siflinger & Michaela Paffenholz & Sebastian Seitz & Moritz Mendel & Hans-Martin von Gaudecker, 2021. "The COVID-19 Pandemic and Mental Health: Disentangling Crucial Channels," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2021_271, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2021_271
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp271
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Foliano, Francesca & Tonei, Valentina & Sevilla, Almudena, 2024. "Social restrictions, leisure and well-being," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    2. Kristine Khachatryan & Manfred E. Beutel & Yve Stöbel-Richter & Markus Zenger & Hendrik Berth & Elmar Brähler & Peter Schmidt, 2022. "Are Attitudes towards COVID-19 Pandemic Related to Subjective Physical and Mental Health?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(21), pages 1-16, November.
    3. Maia Sieverding & Caroline Krafft & Irene Selwaness & Alexandra Abi Nassif, 2023. "Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on subjective wellbeing in the Middle East and North Africa: A gender analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(5), pages 1-16, May.
    4. Lepinteur, Anthony & Clark, Andrew E. & Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Ada & Piper, Alan & Schröder, Carsten & D'Ambrosio, Conchita, 2022. "Gender, loneliness and happiness during COVID-19," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    5. Anna SPINARDI & Nigora ISAMIDDINOVA & Irene CLAVIJO & Kevin HENKENS, 2022. "Mental Health and Gender Inequality in the MENA Region: An Analysis of Shock Related Factors Within the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic," Working Paper 7b4fa973-422c-4998-8e78-0, Agence française de développement.
    6. Apostolos Davillas & Andrew M Jones, 2021. "The first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic and its impact on socioeconomic inequality in psychological distress in the UK," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1668-1683, July.
    7. Ringdal, Charlotte & Rootjes, Frank, 2022. "Depression and labor supply: Evidence from the Netherlands," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • I30 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2021_271. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CRC Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.crctr224.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.