The forces behind social unrest: Evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic

Mario Lackner, Uwe Sunde and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer

PLOS ONE, 2025, vol. 20, issue 1, 1-17

Abstract: The unprecedented consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic have raised concerns about the erosion of social cohesion and intensified social unrest, but evidence for such a link and the underlying channels is still lacking. We use a unique combination of nationally representative survey data, event data on social unrest, and data on Covid-19 fatalities and unemployment at a weekly resolution to investigate the forces behind social cohesion and unrest in the context of the strains on public health and the economy due to the pandemic in the USA. The results show that pandemic-related unemployment and Covid-19 fatalities intensified negative emotional stress and led to a deterioration of economic confidence among individuals. The prevalence of negative emotional stress, particularly in economically strained and politically polarized environments, was, in turn, associated with intensified social unrest as measured by political protests. No such link is found for economic perceptions.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0314165 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 14165&type=printable (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:plo:pone00:0314165

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0314165

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().