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Abstract
We use data from the COME‐HERE longitudinal survey collected by the University of Luxembourg to assess the effects of the policy responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic on life satisfaction in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden over the course of 2020. Policy responses are measured by the Stringency Index and the Economic Support Index from the Blavatnik School of Government. Stringency is systematically associated with lower life satisfaction, controlling for the intensity of the pandemic itself. This stringency effect is larger for women, those with weak ties to the labor market, and in richer households. The effect of the Economic Support is never statistically different from zero.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed our lives
Overall 2020 wellbeing trends certainly partly reflect the spread of COVID-19 itself, we here focus on the well-being consequences of governmental policy responses
There has not been work explicitly relating subjective wellbeing to the changing government pandemic policy responses within different countries using panel data throughout 2020. This is what we do here, exploiting the changes in governments’ pandemic policy responses over time across five European countries. We consider both the stringency of lockdown measures and the economic support provided by governments, which we match to life-satisfaction scores in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden from a large panel survey covering over 8,000 individuals
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed our lives. These have for example become much more sedentary (with less physical activity and more screen time) everywhere in the world (Hu et al, 2020, Kumari et al, 2020, Medrano et al, 2020, and Giuntella et al, 2021). This is what we do here, exploiting the changes in governments’ pandemic policy responses over time across five European countries We consider both the stringency of lockdown measures and the economic support provided by governments, which we match to life-satisfaction scores in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden from a large panel survey covering over 8,000 individuals. Subjective wellbeing measures contain useful information, in that one person who says that they are less satisfied with their job (for example) is more likely to quit it than another with a higher satisfaction score This cross-section correlation between well-being and behaviour underscores that the former is informative about individuals’ unobserved real quality of life: at least to some extent, people mean what they say. The mean level of life satisfaction is 6.3 on the 0-10 scale, and the modal response is 7
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