The impacts of the pandemic are unequally distributed, a results that is found also in other EU countries. Individuals who were out of work experience higher levels of poverty as did women and those with lower education levels. This calls for a targeted policy response to support vulnerable individuals, such as expanding unemployment benefits further and strengthening existing targeted social assistance. We find suggestive evidence that the government’s fiscal stimulus package may have helped in reducing poverty and inequality for recipients of government support. (Study published in Panorama Social 2022,https://www.csl.lu/wp-content/uploads...

Poverty rates increased on average in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden from January to May 2020 and partially recovered in September. The increase in poverty is heterogeneous across countries, with Italy being the most affected and France the least; within countries, COVID-19 contributed to exacerbating poverty differences across regions in Italy and Spain. Poverty increased disproportionately more for young individuals, women, and respondents who had a job in January 2020 – with different intensities across countries. (Study published as Menta, G. (2021). “Poverty in the COVID-19 Era: Real-time Data Analysis on Five European Countries.” Research on Economic Inequality: Poverty, Inequality and Shocks, 29, 209-247

We assess the effects of the policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic on life satisfaction in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden over the course of 2020. Policy responses are measured by the Stringency Index and the Economic Support Index from the Blavatnik School of Government. Stringency is systematically associated with lower life satisfaction, controlling for the intensity of the pandemic itself. This stringency effect is larger for women, those with weak ties to the labour market, and in richer households. The effect of the Economic Support is never statistically different from zero. (Study published as Clark, A.E., and Lepinteur, A. (2022). "Pandemic Policy and Life Satisfaction in Europe." Review of Income and Wealth, 68, 393-408)

We use the COME-HERE panel data from five European countries to establish how individual resilience changes following economic and health shocks during the COVID-19 pandemic. We take into account both the incidence and intensity of shocks We show that experiencing a negative shock at least once during the pandemic, such as job loss, isolation or the diagnosis of a mental disorder, is associated with lower future resilience. There is heterogeneity in resilience. The greatest falls following job loss are for individuals with no children, while those following isolation are larger for the poorer and those with children.

Our results from a laboratory study show that social exclusion decreases need satisfaction and increases negative mood. The extended experience of social exclusion, therefore, is likely to lead to mental health problems in the long run.

With 745,661 vaccine-related tweets originating from three Western European countries, we compare vaccine hesitancy levels measured with our framework against that collected from multiple consecutive waves of surveys. We successfully validate that Twitter, one popular social media platform, can be used as a data source to calculate consistent public acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines with surveys at both country and region levels. In addition, this consistency persists over time although it varies among socio-demographic sub-populations. Our findings establish the power of social media in complementing social surveys to capture the continuously changing vaccine hesitancy in a global health crisis similar to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Study published as Chen, N., Chen, X., Pang, J., Borga, L.G., D’Ambrosio, C., and Vögele, C. (2022). “Measuring COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: Consistency of Social Media with Surveys." University of Luxembourg, mimeo.)

With 745,661 vaccine-related tweets originating from three Western European countries, we compare vaccine hesitancy levels measured with our framework against that collected from multiple consecutive waves of surveys. We successfully validate that Twitter, one popular social media platform, can be used as a data source to calculate consistent public acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines with surveys at both country and region levels. In addition, this consistency persists over time although it varies among socio-demographic sub-populations. Our findings establish the power of social media in complementing social surveys to capture the continuously changing vaccine hesitancy in a global health crisis similar to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Study published as Chen, N., Chen, X., Pang, J., Borga, L.G., D’Ambrosio, C., and Vögele, C. (2022). “Measuring COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: Consistency of Social Media with Surveys." University of Luxembourg, mimeo.)

Understanding what lies behind actual COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is fundamental to help policy makers increase vaccination rates and reach herd immunity. We use June 2021 data the COME-HERE survey to explore the predictors of actual vaccine hesitancy in France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and Sweden. We find that Post-Secondary education, home-ownership, having an underlying health condition, and one standard-deviation higher age or income are all associated with lower vaccine hesitancy of 2–4.5% points. Conservative-leaning political attitudes and a one standard-deviation lower degree of confidence in the government increase this probability by 3 and 6% points respectively. (Study published as Borga, L.G., Clark, A.E., D’Ambrosio, C., and Lepinteur, A.(2022). "Characteristics associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy." Scientific Reports 12, 12435)