Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/268712 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research No. 1178
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin
Abstract: 
We analyse a measure of loneliness from a representative sample of German individuals interviewed in both 2017 and at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Both men and women felt lonelier during the COVID-19 pandemic than they did in 2017. The pandemic more than doubled the gender loneliness gap: women were lonelier than men in 2017, and the 2017-2020 rise in loneliness was far larger for women. This rise is mirrored in life-satisfaction scores. Men's life satisfaction changed only little between 2017 and 2020; yet that of women fell dramatically, and sufficiently so to produce a female penalty in life satisfaction. We estimate that almost all of this female penalty is explained by the disproportionate rise in loneliness for women during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Subjects: 
Loneliness
Life Satisfaction
Gender
COVID-19
SOEP
JEL: 
I10
I14
I18
I30
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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