Women's well-being during a pandemic and its containment

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.

Keywords: COVID-19; Depression; Gender; India; Nutrition.

Fig. 1

Impact of aggregate shock on income and female well-being. Notes: The left sub-figure reports the distribution of the inverse hyperbolic sine of the household head’s self-reported income in the current month and a normal month in rupees. The right sub-figure reports the percentage of households reporting reduced income, reduced meals, and worsening measures of female well-being. ‘Lost Income’ is the percentage of households where the head reported less income in the current month than a normal month. ‘Reduced Meals’ is the percentage of households where the head reported reducing the number/size of meals for at least one person in the household. The outcomes for female well-being (e.g., more depressed) were elicited by asking, “Have these feelings become worse now compared to before the COVID-19 crisis?” The figure reports the percentage of households with women reporting worse well-being.

Fig. 2

Female well-being and socioeconomic outcomes by containment intensity. Notes: This figure reports the relationship between district level leave-one-out average containment and women’s well-being and household’s socioeconomic outcomes. Each point represents a district level average, with bubble size weighted by sample size. $\beta$ reports the regression coefficient, with standard errors clustered at the district level in parentheses. *,**, and *** denote 10, 5, and 1% significance respectively. The ‘Lost Income’ and ‘Reduced Meals’ questions were asked to the male household head. ‘Reduced Meals’ is an indicator variable for whether the head reported reducing the number/size of meals for at least one person in the household. ‘Lost Income’ is the number of adults who contribute to the income of the household who have lost their job or had their income reduced due to COVID-19. The outcomes for female well-being (e.g., more depressed) were asked directly to the female and were elicited by asking, “Have these feelings become worse now compared to before the COVID-19 crisis?” .