COVID-19 and Subjective Well-Being in Urban Pakistan in the Beginning of the Pandemic: A Socio-Economic Analysis

Khadija Shams () and Alexander Kadow ()
Additional contact information
Khadija Shams: University of Glasgow
Alexander Kadow: University of Glasgow

Applied Research in Quality of Life, 2023, vol. 18, issue 1, No 5, 93-113

Abstract: Abstract This study contributes to the existing literature on happiness studies by analyzing the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on subjective well-being (SWB) in a developing country, focusing specifically on satisfaction with socio-economic status. Drawing on survey data for urban Pakistan from before and after the outbreak of COVID-19, we find that during the early days of the pandemic and the related social distancing and potential lockdowns, SWB declined, particularly among unemployed, married couples, males and older people. Unexpectedly, we also observed that households having a higher income suffered more from the pandemic in terms of satisfaction with their socio-economic status compared to their poorer counterparts. We explain this finding by increased fear for falling into poverty due to lockdowns and inflation.

Keywords: Subjective; well-being.; COVID-19; pandemic.; Socioeconomic; and; demographic; factors.; Urban; Pakistan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11482-022-10114-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:ariqol:v:18:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s11482-022-10114-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11482

DOI: 10.1007/s11482-022-10114-3

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Research in Quality of Life is currently edited by Daniel Shek

More articles in Applied Research in Quality of Life from Springer, International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().