Yamamura Eiji, Kohsaka Youki, Tsutsui Yoshiro, Ohtake Fumio
Department of Economics, Seinan Gakuin University, Fukuoka 814-8511, Japan.
Department of Management Information, Kyoto College of Economics, Kyoto 610-1195, Japan.
Vaccines (Basel). 2023 Apr 10;11(4):822. doi: 10.3390/vaccines11040822.
Vaccination has been promoted to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Vaccination is expected to reduce the probability of and alleviate the seriousness of COVID-19 infection. Accordingly, this might significantly change an individual's subjective well-being and mental health. We observed the same individuals on a monthly basis from March 2020 to September 2021 in all parts of Japan. Then, large sample panel data (N = 54,007) were independently constructed. Using the data, we compared the individuals' perceptions of COVID-19, subjective well-being, and mental health before and after vaccination. Furthermore, we compared the effect of vaccination on the perceptions of COVID-19 and mental health for females and males. We used the fixed-effects model to control for individual time-invariant characteristics. The major findings were as follows: First, the vaccinated people perceived the probability of getting infected and the seriousness of COVID-19 to be lower than before vaccination. This was observed not only when we used the whole sample but also when we used subsamples of males and a subsample of females. Second, subjective well-being and mental health improved. The same results were also observed using the subsample of females, whereas the improvements were not observed when using a subsample of males. This implies that females' quality of life was more likely to be improved by vaccination than males' one. The novelty of the work is to show the gender difference in the vaccination effects.
疫苗接种已得到推广，以减轻2019冠状病毒病（COVID-19）的传播。疫苗接种有望降低感染COVID-19的概率并减轻其严重程度。因此，这可能会显著改变个体的主观幸福感和心理健康。从2020年3月到2021年9月，我们在日本各地每月观察相同的个体。然后，独立构建了大样本面板数据（N = 54,007）。利用这些数据，我们比较了个体在接种疫苗前后对COVID-19的认知、主观幸福感和心理健康状况。此外，我们还比较了疫苗接种对男性和女性COVID-19认知及心理健康的影响。我们使用固定效应模型来控制个体的时间不变特征。主要研究结果如下：第一，接种疫苗的人认为感染的概率和COVID-19的严重程度低于接种疫苗前。不仅在使用全样本时观察到这一点，在使用男性子样本和女性子样本时也观察到了这一点。第二，主观幸福感和心理健康状况有所改善。在女性子样本中也观察到了相同的结果，而在男性子样本中未观察到改善。这意味着接种疫苗对女性生活质量的改善可能比对男性的改善更大。这项工作的新颖之处在于展示了疫苗接种效果的性别差异。
