Well-Being throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany: Gendered Effects of Daycare and School Closures

Mathias Huebener, Sevrin Waights and C. Katharina Spieß (c.katharina.spiess@bib.bund.de)
Additional contact information
Sevrin Waights: Humboldt University Berlin
C. Katharina Spieß: Bundesinstitut für Bevölkerungsforschung (BiB)

No 16907, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this chapter, we aim to improve the understanding of the well-being impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. We provide an overview of the existing literature and carry out empirical analysis aimed at addressing certain gaps in the knowledge. Specifically, we examine the evolution of parental well-being over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany and relate changes to the severity of restrictions on school and daycare facilities. Our analysis makes use of unique data from the COMPASS survey collected at 17 different point throughout the pandemic in Germany. We find that there is a large difference in retrospective stress-feelings between women and men that is present only for individuals living with children under the age of 12. We also show that the size of the gender gap in life satisfaction fluctuates over time in a way that is related to severity of restrictions to daycare and school operation.

Keywords: school closures; COVID-19; gender inequality; well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I24 I31 J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2024-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hap and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: K. Couch (ed.), Handbook of Inequality and COVID-19, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025, 183 - 197

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16907.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16907

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
library@iza.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte (hinte@iza.org).