Beyond the Disruption: Medium- and Long-Term Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Well-Being

Beschreibung

"This special issue addresses these gaps by advancing our understanding of (1) the medium- and long-term effects of the pandemic on subjective well-being, (2) the mechanisms underlying changes in well-being during the pandemic, and (3) heterogeneity in pandemic effects across different population groups in various domains of individuals’ well-being - e.g., (life) satisfaction, affective well-being, mental health, social exclusion, and loneliness. The contributions employ identification strategies that aim at estimating causal effects, such as difference-in-differences and fixed-effects estimation to account for unobserved confounders. In doing so, the contributions extend the observation window beyond the acute lockdown shock and privilege causal over descriptive accounts. Overall, the special issue moves the field beyond purely descriptive accounts toward a more nuanced, causally informed understanding of how a major societal crisis affects individual well-being. The 22 contributions assembled in the special issue advance the literature along four thematic pillars: (i) the medium- and long-term effects of the pandemic and its post-pandemic consequences; (ii) the heterogeneous consequences of the pandemic across population groups; (iii) the mechanisms linking COVID-19-induced changes in societal subsystems to individuals’ quality of life; and (iv) the impact of the pandemic on different measurements of quality of life. The studies cover a wide geographical range, including European countries (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK, and EU-wide samples), East Asian contexts (Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan), and Israel, and rely on high-quality longitudinal panel data, often drawing on multiple waves collected before, during, and after the pandemic. Methodologically, the contributions go beyond merely cross-sectional descriptions, applying a wide range of causal modelling approaches to identify pandemic effects net of pre-pandemic trends and unobserved heterogeneity. We organize the discussion of the contributions around four broad outcome domains: cognitive and affective well-being (Sect. 2), mental health and stress (Sect. 3), social exclusion, loneliness, and trust (Sect. 4), and labor market- and education-related well-being (Sect. 5). Several papers cut across multiple domains and are discussed wherever they speak most directly to the focal outcome. We then conclude with an overarching discussion of cross-cutting findings, methodological lessons, and an outlook for future research (Sect. 6)." (Text excerpt, IAB-Doku, © Springer-Verlag) ((en))

Zitationshinweis

Collischon, Matthias, Jacqueline Kroh & Alexander Patzina (2026): Beyond the Disruption: Medium- and Long-Term Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Well-Being. In: Social indicators research, Jg. 184, H. 2. DOI:10.1007/s11205-026-03927-4