Well-being Analysis Favours a Virus-Elimination Strategy for COVID-19

John Helliwell, Max Norton, Shun Wang (), Lara B. Aknin and Haifang Huang ()

No 29092, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: A well-being approach requires looking beyond COVID-19 deaths to compare the performance of elimination versus mitigation strategies as measured by other important supports for well-being. What do the data show? Our comparison based on 2020 data shows a virus elimination strategy to be more successful than other options, whether measured in terms of COVID-19 deaths, overall excess deaths, income, unemployment, trust, or mental and physical health. Countries that chose and followed a strategy of reducing community transmission to zero and keeping it there saved lives and better protected income and employment, all without obvious costs to either the social fabric or the mental health of their populations.

JEL-codes: H12 H51 I14 I18 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-isf
Note: EH PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29092.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:nbr:nberwo:29092

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29092

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().