Reference : Gender, Loneliness and Happiness during COVID-19
Scientific journals : Article
Business & economic sciences : Social economics
http://hdl.handle.net/10993/52621
Gender, Loneliness and Happiness during COVID-19
English
Lepinteur, Anthony[University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (DBCS) >]
Clark, Andrew[Paris School of Economics – CNRS and University of Luxembourg]
d'Ambrosio, Conchita[University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (DBCS) >]
[en] Loneliness ; Life Satisfaction ; Covid-19 ; SOEP
[en] 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.