Women's Well-Being During a Pandemic and its Containment

Natalie Bau, Gaurav Khanna, Corinne Low, Manisha Shah (manishashah@berkeley.edu), Sreyashi Sharmin and Alessandra Voena

No 29121, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic brought the dual crises of disease and the containment policies designed to mitigate it. Yet, there is little evidence on the impacts of these policies on women in lower-income countries, where there may be limited social safety nets to absorb these shocks. We conduct a large phone survey and leverage India's geographically varied containment policies to estimate the association between the pandemic and containment policies and measures of women's well-being, including mental health and food security. On aggregate, the pandemic resulted in dramatic income losses, increases in food insecurity, and declines in female mental health. While potentially crucial to stem the spread of COVID-19, the greater prevalence of containment policies is associated with increased food insecurity, particularly for women, and reduced female mental health. For surveyed women, moving from zero to average containment levels is associated with a 38% increase in the likelihood of reporting more depression, a 73% increase in reporting more exhaustion, and a 44% increase in reporting more anxiety. Women whose social position may make them more vulnerable—those with daughters and those living in female-headed households—experience even larger declines in mental health.

JEL-codes: I14 I15 J16 O12 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-hap, nep-hea and nep-isf
Note: DEV EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published as Natalie Bau & Gaurav Khanna & Corinne Low & Manisha Shah & Sreyashi Sharmin & Alessandra Voena, 2022. "Women’s well-being during a pandemic and its containment," Journal of Development Economics, .

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29121.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Women’s well-being during a pandemic and its containment (2022)
Working Paper: Women's Well-being During a Pandemic and its Containment (2021)
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:29121

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29121

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 (wpc@nber.org).