Three years of COVID-19 and life satisfaction in Europe: A macro view.

Every country in Europe experienced an adverse impact from the COVID-19 pandemic on life satisfaction, though on average, satisfaction with life in the summer of 2022 is about the same as the pre-pandemic value in the autumn of 2019. Typically, an upsurge in the severity of the pandemic (measured by the number of COVID-related deaths) is associated with declining life satisfaction and an ebbing, with increasing life satisfaction. Of the three waves of the pandemic between March 2020 and the autumn of 2022, the most severe impact typically occurred in 2021 during the second wave; in the third wave, the response declined due to the spread of effective vaccines and the takeover of omicron variants.

Explaining happiness trends in Europe.

In Europe, differences among countries in the overall change in happiness since the early 1980s have been due chiefly to the generosity of welfare state programs-increasing happiness going with increasing generosity and declining happiness with declining generosity. This is the principal conclusion from a time-series study of 10 Northern, Western, and Southern European countries with the requisite data. In the present study, cross-section analysis of recent data gives a misleading impression that economic growth, social capital, and/or quality of the environment are driving happiness trends, but in the long-term, time-series data, these variables have no relation to happiness.

Trust predicts compliance with COVID-19 containment policies: Evidence from ten countries using big data.

We use Twitter, Google mobility, and Oxford policy data to study the relationship between trust and compliance over the period March 2020 to January 2021 in ten, mostly European, countries. Trust has been shown to be an important correlate of compliance with COVID-19 containment policies. However, the previous findings depend upon two assumptions: first, that compliance is time invariant, and second, that compliance can be measured using self reports or mobility measures alone. We relax these assumptions by calculating a new time-varying measure of compliance as the association between containment policies and people's mobility behavior. Additionally, we develop measures of trust in others and national institutions by applying emotion analysis to Twitter data. Results from various panel estimation techniques demonstrate that compliance changes over time and that increasing (decreasing) trust in others predicts increasing (decreasing) compliance. This evidence indicates that compliance changes over time, and further confirms the importance of cultivating trust in others.

Neo-humanism and COVID-19: Opportunities for a socially and environmentally sustainable world.

A series of crises, culminating with COVID-19, shows that going "Beyond GDP" is urgently necessary. Social and environmental degradation are consequences of emphasizing GDP as a measure of progress. This degradation created the conditions for the COVID-19 pandemic and limited the efficacy of counter-measures. Additionally, rich countries did not fare much better during the pandemic than poor ones. COVID-19 thrived on inequalities and lack of cooperation. In this article, we leverage on defensive growth theory to explain the relationships between these factors, and we put forward the idea of neo-humanism, a cultural movement grounded on evidence from quality-of-life studies. The movement proposes a new culture leading towards a socially and environmentally sustainable future. Specifically, neo-humanism suggests that prioritizing well-being by, for instance promoting social relations, would benefit the environment, and enable collective action to address public issues. This, in turn, would positively affect productivity and health - among other behavioral outcomes - and thereby instill a virtuous cycle. Such a society would have been better endowed to cope with COVID-19, and possibly even prevented the pandemic. Neo-humanism proposes a world in which the well-being of people comes before the well-being of markets, in which promoting cooperation and social relations represents the starting point for better lives, and a peaceful and respectful coexistence with other species on Earth.

One in Three Luxembourg Residents Report their Mental Health Declined during the COVID-19 Crisis.

COVID-19 has had unprecedented effects on people around the world, causing even the best performing communities to live in uncertainty for the future. How are people coping? We - the general public, the academic community, and policy makers - need answers. To that end we analyse novel data for Luxembourg, finding one third of residents report their mental health declined during lockdown and young adults (ages 18-44) fared the worst. The most important contributors observed are physical health, income, and employment characteristics, such as working from home, which people seemed to enjoy. To limit collateral damage on mental health, various tools are available, which we briefly discuss.