The varying impacts of COVID-19 and its related measures in the UK: A year in review

Zhou, Muzhi; Kan, Man-Yee

We examine how the earnings, time use, and subjective wellbeing of different social groups changed at different stages/waves of the pandemic in the United Kingdom (UK). We analyze longitudinal data from the latest UK Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS) COVID study and the earlier waves of the UKHLS to investigate within-individual changes in labor income, paid work time, housework time, childcare time, and distress level during the three lockdown periods and the easing period between them (from April 2020 to late March 2021). We find that as the pandemic developed, COVID-19 and its related lockdown measures in the UK had unequal and varying impacts on people’s income, time use, and subjective well-being based on their gender, ethnicity, and educational level. In conclusion, the extent of the impacts of COVID-19 and COVID-induced measures as well as the speed at which these impacts developed, varied across social groups with different types of vulnerabilities.