 Global pain levels before and during the COVID-19 pandemicLucía Macchia, Liam Delaney and Michael Daly Economics & Human Biology, 2024, vol. 52, issue C Abstract: Physical pain has trended upward globally over the last decade. Here, we explore whether the COVID-19 pandemic modified this alarming trend. We used data from 146 countries worldwide (510,247 respondents) to examine whether pain levels changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adjusted regressions across countries revealed that 33.3% of people were in pain in 2019, 32.8% in 2020, 32.5% in 2021, and 34.1% in 2022. The change in pain from 2019 to each of the pandemic years was not statistically significant. This suggests that, on average, there was no significant change in pain during the pandemic. However, from 2019 to 2020 there was a significant decline in pain among individuals over 55 years of age, those who were widowed, and those without children in the household. On a global scale, the COVID-19 pandemic was not associated with a significant change in pain levels. The concerning pre-pandemic elevation in global pain continued during this challenging period. Keywords: Physical pain; COVID-19; Pandemic; Global evidence; Survey research (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:52:y:2024:i:c:s1570677x23001181 DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2023.101337 Access Statistics for this article Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier |
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