Curtailment of Civil Liberties and Subjective Life Satisfaction.

This analysis focuses on the lockdown measures in the context of the Covid-19 crisis in Spring 2020 in Germany. In a randomized survey experiment, respondents were asked to evaluate their current life satisfaction after being provided with varying degrees of information about the lethality of Covid-19. We use reactance as a measure of the intensity of a preference for freedom to explain the variation in the observed subjective life satisfaction loss. Our results suggest that it is not high reactance alone that is associated with large losses of life satisfaction due to the curtailment of liberties. The satisfaction loss occurs in particular in combination with receiving information about the (previously overestimated) lethality of Covid-19. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10902-021-00491-1.

[Lost Happiness - Loss of Life Satisfaction in the Corona Crisis]. / Verlorenes Glück ­ Zufriedenheitsverluste in der Corona-Krise.

This study illustrates the loss of life satisfaction, and with it the psychological costs of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown measures taken, for self-employed and women. Building on the data collected by Windsteiger et al. (2020) and their internet interviews at the peak of lockdown measures, and looking at specific population subgroups, this essay illustrates that many solo self-employed and women report a significant decline in life satisfaction, and that these effects are strongest where solo self-employment coincides with economic losses and childcare responsibilities for women with children of dependent age.