The gender gap in mental well-being at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic: Evidence from the UK

Abstract

We assess the decline in mental health after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK. This decline was more than twice as large for women as for men. We seek to explain this gender gap by exploring gender differences in: family and caring responsibilities; financial and work situation; social engagement; health situation, and health behaviours, including exercise. We assess their quantitative relevance by applying standard decomposition methods. We find that compositional differences in family and caring responsibilities explain part of the gender gap, but more important are gender differences in social factors, particularly changes in loneliness. We explore this result further by analysing gender differences in personality traits. Even after controlling for all factors there remains a noticeable age-gender gradient, with young females suffering particularly badly.

Keywords: Covid-19; Gender; Mental health; Mental well-being.

Fig. 1

Mental well-being by gender, up to April 2020. Notes: Data from UKHLS waves 1–10, 2019 wave and April 2020 Covid module. Figure shows standardized, seasonally-adjusted and inverted Likert score, obtained from 12 questions in the General Health Questionnaire. See Section 2 for more details. Profiles indexed to 0 in 2016. Sample consists of all those responding to the Covid module, whether or not they responded to previous waves. Interviews binned according to the calendar year of the response rather than reference year of survey wave. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals.

Fig. 2

Distributions of mental well-being before and during the pandemic, by gender. Notes: Data from UKHLS 2019 and Covid module. Figure shows standardized and inverted Likert score, obtained from 12 questions in the General Health Questionnaire.

Fig. 3

Fraction of women and men facing a given circumstance . Notes: Data from 2019 and Covid module, including survey weights. Variables are the same as those presented in Table 1, Table 2, Table 3. For each variable, the figure reports proportions of the sample taking each value, by gender.

Fig. 4

Compositional contributions to the gender gap . Notes: Figure shows components of the composition effect, shown in Table 4, as a percentage of the total gender gap. Areas above the axis are positive contributions to explaining the gap, areas below the axis are negative contributions. See Table 4 for more details on underlying calculations.

Fig. A.1

Mental well-being by gender across the first year of the pandemic. Notes: Data from UKHLS 2019 wave and Covid module. Figure shows standardized, seasonally-adjusted and inverted Likert score, obtained from 12 questions in the General Health Questionnaire. See Section 2 for more details. Profiles indexed to 0 in 2019. Sample consists of all those responding to each wave. Cross-sectional survey weights used. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals..

Fig. A.2

Fraction of women and men facing a given circumstance . Notes: Data from 2019 and Covid module, including survey weights. Variables are the same as those presented in Table A.2, Table A.3, Table A.4. For each variable, the figure reports proportions of the sample taking each value, by gender.