Greyling Talita, Rossouw Stephanie, Adhikari Tamanna
School of Economics University of Johannesburg.
Faculty of Business, Economics and Law Auckland University of Technology.
S Afr J Econ. 2021 Mar;89(1):25-43. doi: 10.1111/saje.12284. Epub 2021 Feb 19.
The COVID-19 pandemic led many governments to implement lockdown regulations to curb the spread of the virus. Though lockdowns do minimise the physical damage caused by the virus, there may also be substantial damage to population well-being. Using a pooled data set, we analyse the relationship between a mandatory lockdown and happiness in three diverse countries: South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. These countries differ amongst others in terms of lockdown regulations and duration. The primary aim is to determine, whether a lockdown is negatively associated with happiness, notwithstanding the characteristics of a country or the strictness of the lockdown regulations. Second, we compare the effect size of the lockdown on happiness between these countries. We use Difference-in-Difference estimations to determine the association between lockdown and happiness and a Least Squares Dummy Variable estimation to study the heterogeneity in the effect size of the lockdown by country. Our results show that a lockdown is associated with a decline in happiness, regardless of the characteristics of the country or the type and duration of its lockdown regulations. Furthermore, the effect size differs between countries in the sense that the more stringent the stay-at-home regulations are, the greater it seems to be.
新冠疫情促使许多政府实施封锁规定以遏制病毒传播。尽管封锁确实能将病毒造成的身体伤害降至最低，但对民众福祉也可能造成重大损害。我们使用一个汇总数据集，分析了南非、新西兰和澳大利亚这三个不同国家的强制封锁与幸福感之间的关系。这些国家在封锁规定和持续时间等方面存在差异。主要目的是确定，尽管各国情况不同且封锁规定严格程度各异，但封锁是否与幸福感呈负相关。其次，我们比较这些国家封锁对幸福感的影响程度。我们使用差分估计来确定封锁与幸福感之间的关联，并使用最小二乘虚拟变量估计来研究不同国家封锁影响程度的异质性。我们的结果表明，无论国家的特点或其封锁规定的类型及持续时间如何，封锁都与幸福感下降有关。此外，各国的影响程度有所不同，即居家规定越严格，影响似乎就越大。
