IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iae/iaewps/wp2021n31.html

Protecting mental health during periods of financial stress: Evidence from the Australian Coronavirus Supplement income support payment

Author

Listed:
  • Ferdi Botha

    (Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, the University of Melbourne)

  • Peter Butterworth

    (Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, the University of Melbourne)

  • Roger Wilkins

    (Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, the University of Melbourne)

Abstract

This paper investigates whether the Australian government’s Coronavirus Supplement, a temporary income support payment for unemployed jobseekers during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, protected mental health by lowering financial stress. We use unique nationally representative data on 3,843 Australian adults over the period 6 April 2020 to 10 May 2021. We find that the Coronavirus Supplement payment significantly reduced reported financial stress, and lower financial stress was associated with lower mental distress. The Coronavirus Supplement was successful in protecting community mental health, indirectly through its effect of reducing financial stress. The findings provide support for temporary income support packages to protect mental health during periods of increased financial stress.

Suggested Citation

  • Ferdi Botha & Peter Butterworth & Roger Wilkins, 2021. "Protecting mental health during periods of financial stress: Evidence from the Australian Coronavirus Supplement income support payment," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2021n31, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    • Handle: RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2021n31
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    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. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Mari, Gabriele, 2024. "Pandemic Income Support Programs and Adolescent Mental Health in the UK, Ireland and Australia," SocArXiv pzr4k, Center for Open Science.
    3. Jeong, Soyun & Fox, Ashley M., 2023. "Enhanced unemployment benefits, mental health, and substance use among low-income households during the COVID-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 328(C).
    4. Mari, Gabriele, 2025. "Pandemic income support programs and adolescent mental health in the UK, Ireland, and Australia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 365(C).
    5. Jeff Borland, 2025. "Decline to boom to slowdown: Australia’s labour market in the COVID- 19 era," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2025n15, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    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:iae:iaewps:wp2021n31. 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: Sheri Carnegie (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mimelau.html .

    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.