Pandemic Policy and Life Satisfaction in Europe

• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Author: Andrew E. Clark,Anthony Lepinteur
• Date: 01 June 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12554

© 2021 The Authors. Review of Income and Wealth published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of

International Association for Research in Income and Wealth

393

PANDEMIC POLICY AND LIFE SATISFACTION IN EUROPE

by Andrew e. ClArk

Paris School of Economics— CNRS

AND

Anthony lepinteur*

University of Luxembourg

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.

JEL Codes: H51, I18, I31

Keywords: COVID- 19, life satisfaction, policy stringency, economic support

1. introduCtion

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; Giuntella et al., 2021). On the labor market, unemployment and job insecu-

rity have been on the rise, while working time has fallen (Adams- Prassl et al., 2020;

Bottan et al., 2020; Guven et al., 2020; Beland et al., 2021). Brewer and Gardiner

(2020) use the Resolution Foundation’s Coronavirus Survey, a cross- section dataset

of 6,000 UK adults in early May 2020, to show that the probability of reporting

lower household income has risen. In Belot et al. (2021), cross- section data from

China, Japan, South Korea, Italy, the UK and the US in April 2020 (around 1,000

respondents per country) reveals that the youngest were more likely to experience

drops in household income.

Note: We would like to thank Liyousew Borga, Conchita D’Ambrosio, Giorgia Menta and Remi

Yin for their help and advice. Financial support from the André Losch Fondation, Art2Cure, Cargolux,

Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg (Grant 14840950— COME- HERE) is gratefully ac-

knowledged. Andrew Clark acknowledges financial support from the EUR grant ANR- 17- EURE- 0001.

The Editor (Prasada Rao) and two anonymous referees provided very thorough and helpful

comments.

*Correspondence to: Anthony Lepinteur, University of Luxembourg, 11 Porte des Sciences,

L- 4366 Esch- sur- Alzette, Luxembourg (anthony.lepinteur@uni.lu).

Review of Income and Wealth

Series 68, Number 2, June 2022

DOI: 10.1111/roiw.12554

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creat ive Commo ns Attri bution License, which

permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly

cited.

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Review of Income and Wealth, Series 68, Number 2, June 2022

394

© 2021 The Authors. Review of Income and Wealth published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of

International Association for Research in Income and Wealth

Aknin et al. (2021) review the growing literature on the consequences of living

through the COVID- 19 pandemic on mental health and subjective well- being.

They conclude that the pandemic has triggered a rise in mental- health issues, while

the evidence on cognitive well- being measures is more nuanced. Although over-

all 2020 well- being trends certainly partly reflect the spread of COVID- 19 itself,

we here focus on the well- being consequences of governmental policy responses.

Using the Gross National Happiness Index derived from Twitter, Greyling et al.

(2021) uncover a negative and significant well- being effect of lockdown measures

in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. Using a combination of difference-

in- differences regressions and regression- discontinuity designs, Brodeur et al.

(2021) show that the lockdown measures in Western Europe had a negative impact

on a number of aspects of well- being, as measured by topic searches in Google

Trends. The effect in the US, however, is positive. The difference between Western

Europe and the US is argued to reflect timing of the measures, with the US locking

down later (and the well- being effect of lockdown also being positive in the “later-

lockdown” countries in Europe: Ireland, Portugal and the UK).

Some work has appealed to individual- level data. Fancourt et al. (2020) con-

sider lockdown and mental health in the UK, using a longitudinal observational

study (the UCL COVID- 19 Social Study). They find that depression and anxiety

levels fell during the weeks following the lockdown introduction. Based on the

high- frequency USC Understanding Coronavirus in America Study, Banks et al.

(2021) show a reduction in the prevalence of anxiety, depression and other mental-

health measures such as self- perceived stress following the lockdown of April 2020.

On the contrary, Sibley et al. (2020) find worse mental health after the introduction

of lockdown in panel data from New Zealand. Combining the German Job Search

Panel (a longitudinal survey of employed job seekers registered at the Federal

Employment Agency) and an event- study design, Schmidtke et al. (2021) find that

the first federal lockdown in Germany during March and April 2020 reduced life

satisfaction, affective well- being and mental health. To our knowledge, there has

not been work explicitly relating subjective well- being 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 govern-

ments, which we match to life- satisfaction scores in France, Germany, Italy, Spain,

and Sweden from a large panel survey covering over 8,000 individuals.

Controlling for the evolution of the pandemic itself (via the 4- week average

number of daily deaths), our panel analysis reveals that more- stringent policies sig-

nificantly reduce life satisfaction. In line with the literature suggesting rising gender

inequality during the pandemic, this drop in life satisfaction from confinement is

larger for women. It is also larger for respondents with the weakest ties to the labor

market, and for those with a relatively high income. The for mer is consistent with

greater feelings of job insecurity caused by the labor- market disruption from lock-

down, while the latter may reflect the restrictions on certain types of leisure con-

sumption that are more prevalent among the better- off (for example, international

tourism, restaurants and theatre).