Akbar Zamanzadeh, University of South Australia

Title: Mental health and job loss during COVID crisis: A cross-country evidence

Abstract: Using a rich household-level dataset from six countries, we examine the association between job loss and four different mental health disorders, i.e., anxiety, insomnia, boredom, and loneliness during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our samples cover two groups of countries; one with lesser COVID infection rates (China and South Korea) and the other, which experienced high infection rates (Japan, Italy, the UK and US) during the first wave of a global pandemic. After controlling for various economic and individual-level characteristics, we employ robustness test to make sure the association between job loss and mental health wellbeing is reliable over different clusters and for each country. The findings reveal that people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic are more likely to suffer from mental disorders, especially insomnia and loneliness. Additionally, people with financial liabilities such as housing mortgages are among the mentally vulnerable groups to anxiety. Women, urban residences, youth, low-income groups and tobacco users are more prone to mental illnesses. The findings from this research have significant policy implications on infectious disease control measures and mental health disorders due to lockdowns and social distancing.

Presenter: ‪Akbar Zamanzadeh, University of South Australia

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