Blanchflower and Bryson (2021) on Covid and Mental Health

David G. Blanchflower and Alex Bryson, “Biden, Covid and Mental Health in America.” NBER Working Paper 29040, July 2021.

• The onset of Covid brought on an economic cataclysm in the US [and elsewhere, of course]. Weekly claims for unemployment assistance in the US prior to mid-March 2020 were on the order of 250,000. One week later, they were 2.9 million, and the subsequent week, 6 million.

• Unemployment in February 2020 was 3.5%, and in April 2020, 14.7% (or five percentage points higher when absent (effectively laid-off) workers are included). By November 2021, the US returned to mid-2020 levels of unemployment claims, and the October 2021 unemployment rate was 4.6%.

• What did the pandemic, and its economic effects, do to mental health in the US? To answer this question, the authors employ Household Pulse Survey Data (an ongoing survey) from April 2020 to June 2021, covering some 2.3 million Americans.

• Happiness in the US had been declining for decades prior to Covid (using the very happy, pretty happy, not too happy scale); extreme distress (and deaths of despair) had been rising for decades, especially for people under 30.  

• Anxiety, depression, and worry all peaked in November 2020 (the presidential election month); but by April 2021, mental health was back at pre-Covid levels. The Covid-onset surge in mental health problems was largest for the young. 

• The mental health impacts of Covid on young people, combined with schooling disruptions and a bad macroeconomy for labor market entrants, could hold negative long-term economic effects for the "young during Covid" cohort.