Gender, loneliness and happiness during COVID-19
Journal article: We analyse a measure of loneliness from a representative sample of German individuals interviewed in both 2017 and at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Both men and women felt lonelier during the COVID-19 pandemic than they did in 2017. The pandemic more than doubled the gender loneliness gap: women were lonelier than men in 2017, and the 2017-2020 rise in loneliness was far larger for women. This rise is mirrored in life-satisfaction scores. Men's life satisfaction changed only little between 2017 and 2020; yet that of women fell dramatically, and sufficiently so to produce a female penalty in life satisfaction. We estimate that almost all of this female penalty is explained by the disproportionate rise in loneliness for women during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Author(s)
Anthony Lepinteur, Andrew E. Clark, Ada Ferrer-I-Carbonell, Alan Piper, Carsten Schröder, Conchita d’Ambrosio
Journal
- Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics
Date of publication
- 2022
Keywords JEL
Keywords
- Loneliness
- Life satisfaction
- Gender
- COVID-19
- SOEP
URL of the HAL notice
Version
- 1
Volume
- 101