Less is more? Why do we find less severe mental and material impact of COVID-19 among the most marginalised and homeless in countries with lower welfare spending?

Abstract

The study examines how various policy approaches in countries may have influenced the material and mental well-being outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic among marginalised groups and people experiencing homelessness in Europe. In a structured country comparison case study approach, we combine country-based indicators, e.g., the level of infection, unemployment, and restrictions, with individual data from a cross-sectional survey with 226 participants from 6 European countries. Contrary to expectations, our results suggest that vulnerable people living in countries with low welfare expenditure report lower negative mental and material impact of the COVID-19 pandemic than people living in countries with high welfare expenditure countries. This unexpected result could be explained by higher expectations of the level of support they should have received during extraordinary times such as the pandemic among respondents in the studied high welfare expenditure countries. Due to our cross-sectional design across only six countries, we cannot generalise the trend to Europe and only speculate on the causal mechanisms behind the observed association. We also discuss factors like the accessibility of care organisations' support and pre-existing welfare policies. We suggest possible additional factors that may shed light on our results, noting that these issues need to be examined further in future studies with a more extensive study sample.