The Covid-19 pandemic officially ended almost three years ago. Let us revisit that period and examine how it changed (or not) our lives, institutions and attitudes.
Why this book?
The pandemic created a sudden and dramatic change to our lives, unprecedented since the Second World War. It was a wake-up call for Social Scientists, to heed Durkheim’s plea: “Sociology is not worth an hour of work if it is speculative only.” This interdisciplinary team of authors was at the forefront of studying societal response to these dramatic changes triggered by the pandemic. They were part of organisations that had anticipated and responded to societal and researchers need for high quality survey data to study the impact of the pandemic on individuals and households.
Initially, the authors were working independently at the national level, but they soon realized that they were proceeding in parallel with similar tools and foci, and much could be learnt about the role of national institutions and government responses by studying cross country comparisons over the entire duration of the pandemic. In 2021, Prof Ettore Recchi, the French team coordinator, took the initiative to invite members of the German, British, and Italian teams to Paris. Properly face-masked (though some participated via Zoom), the groundwork for this book was laid in a reconverted cellar room at Sciences Po in December 2021.
What did we do?
Existing and ongoing research about the pandemic had shown how the pandemic had affected individual lives across the globe. For example, mental health and deteriorated sharply and existing inequalities had exacerbated. “What was missing was a comparative analysis across countries that extends beyond these short-term effects while simultaneously analysing diverse societal dimension, including work and employment, health, family and social life, and the political landscape.” As the team had access to rich, detailed, survey data on individuals and households, collected during and prior to the pandemic, they were able to study, not only what was happening to people’s lives during the pandemic, but also what had changed.
We harmonised data from four panel surveys and analysed the data to conduct cross-country comparisons:
- France: Coping with COVID-19 (CoCo) and Étude Longitudinal par Internet pour les Sciences Sociales (ELIPSS)
- Italy: The ResPOnsE COVID-19 project (Response of Italian Public Opinion to the Coivid-19 Emergency)
- Germany: The Mannheim Corona Study (MCS) and the German Internet Panel (GIP)
- UK: Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) and the Understanding Society Covid-19 Study (COVID-19). For UK, data from the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA) was also analysed.
The research undertaken has focussed on four phases – “the pre-pandemic period, the initial shock in spring 2020, the subsequent lockdowns from winter 2020 to spring 2021, and a final period of decline in spring 2022.”
What did we find?
There were some common patterns across the countries…
The pandemic brought about major changes to how we work with possibility of remote work and furlough schemes.Remote work mainly benefited higher-skilled workers, while furlough schemes helped prevent widespread job losses. However, despite expectations that the COVID pandemic and lockdowns might promote more equal sharing of housework, gender inequalities in unpaid care and household work persisted. This resulted in a gendered effect of remote work: mothers faced greater negative impacts on wellbeing than fathers due to traditional caregiving roles becoming harder to balance with remote work.
Mental and physical health worsened, and loneliness increased during the pandemic, particularly after the initial Shock period. This is possibly because during this Shock period families were “forced” to live together and support each other while the circumstances were not worse for those living by themselves. This could also reflect the “Eye of the Hurricane” paradox where most individuals are not infected and so viewed their own lives more positively in comparison to the few who were.
While global, the pandemic was not experienced in the same way by everyone: economic hardships, housework and care responsibilities, risk of death from Covid-19 were far worse for some groups. Existing inequalities worsened during the pandemic. Vulnerable groups—such as those facing financial hardship, younger adults, women, ethnic minorities, and parents of young children—experienced greater challenges in physical health, mental health, and wellbeing, with some exceptions.
As the pandemic progressed, governments imposed various policies to counter its impact. During the initial phases, there was a temporary increase in political support for institutions—described as a “rally-round-the-flag” effect—driven by heightened uncertainty. However, this consensus quickly dissolved as pre-existing political polarisation re-emerged. Collectivist and anti-liberal orientationsalso briefly gained prominence at first, but later declined, largely in response to robust social protection policies. Attitudes among those in job retention schemes—who endured comparable income losses to those who lost their job—resembled those among individuals with continuous employment. This suggests that attitudinal shifts were driven more by perceived risks of job loss than immediate material conditions alone.
And there were some differences…
UK led the adoption and persistence of remote work, while Germany’s job retention schemes were particularly effective. France and the UK experienced declines in employment initially but soon recovered.
Gender differences in housework were less pronounced in France reflecting lower pre-pandemic inequalities. This is reflected in almost no gender difference in depressive and anxiety symptoms reported in France compared to the other countries.
While in Italy and the UK there was a decrease in anxiety, depression and loneliness by the end of the pandemic, this was not the case in France and Germany. In particular, loneliness increased sharply in France after the initial Shock period continued to rise.
Find out more about the book here
Editors: Elias Naumann, Ferruccio Biolcati Rinaldi, Alita Nandi, Ettore Recchi
Contributors (in alphabetical order): Marija Bashevska, Emanuele Ferragina, Marta Dominguez Folgueras, Thierry Gagne, Simona Guglielmi, Bartholomew Konechni, Ricardo Ladini, Nicola Maggini, Marco Maraffi, Piotr Marzec, Anne McMunn, Francesco Molteni, Marta Moroni, Olof Östergren, Marta Pasqualini, Giulia Dotti Sani, Andrea Turkovic, Andrew Zola