Gender Differences in Reduced Well-being during the COVID-19 Pandemic – the Role of Working Conditions

Gundula Zoch, Ann-Christin Bächmann () and Basha Vicari ()
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Gundula Zoch: Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsverläufe
Ann-Christin Bächmann: Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany ; Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsverläufe
Basha Vicari: Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany

No 202104, IAB-Discussion Paper from Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]

Abstract: "The COVID-19 pandemic has had very different impacts on the employment and family work conditions of men and women. Thus, it might have jeopardised the slow and hard-won reduction of gender inequalities in the division of labour achieved in recent decades. Using data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and its supplementary COVID-19 web survey for Germany, we investigate the relationship between working conditions and gender differences in subjective well-being during the first months of the pandemic. Therefore, we systematically consider the household context by distinguishing between adults with and without young children. The results from multivariate regression models accounting for pre-corona satisfaction reveal a decline in all respondents’ life satisfaction, particularly among women and mothers with young children. However, the greater reduction in women’s well-being cannot be linked to systematic differences in working conditions throughout the pandemic. Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder counterfactual decompositions confirm this conclusion. However, further robustness checks suggest that women’s societal concerns and greater loneliness partly explain the remaining gender differences during the first months of the crisis. From a general perspective, our results suggest important gender differences in social life and psychological distress in spring 2020, which are likely to become more pronounced as the crisis unfolds." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Keywords: Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Pandemie; Auswirkungen; Determinanten; Frauen; geschlechtsspezifische Faktoren; Lebenssituation; Männer; Mütter; psychische Faktoren; Nationales Bildungspanel; Arbeitsbedingungen; soziale Isolation; Zufriedenheit; 2019-2020 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J13 J22 J28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2021-04-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-gen, nep-hap and nep-lab
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iab:iabdpa:202104

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