The Covid-19 pandemic as an accelerator of economic worries and labor-related mental health polarization in Germany? A longitudinal interacted mediation analysis with a difference-in-difference comparison.
| Autor: | Demirer I; University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Institute of Medical Sociology, Health Services Research, and Rehabilitation Science (IMVR), Chair of Medical Sociology, Germany., Pförtner TK; Department of Research Methods, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany. |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Zdroj: | SSM - population health [SSM Popul Health] 2023 Jul 18; Vol. 23, pp. 101469. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Jul 18 (Print Publication: 2023). |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101469 |
| Abstrakt: | Objectives: Labor-related mental health polarization refers to exposure to low-paid employment and unemployment decreasing mental health. Previous research identified economic worries as a key mediator. Against this background, the Covid-19 pandemic is often assumed to have accelerated already existing processes and affected vulnerable populations the most. Our study sought to investigate whether the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the mediation by economic worries between employment type and mental health. Method: Using the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP) from 2016 onwards, we created a pre-Covid-19 sample (N = 8266) and a per-Covid-19 sample (N = 7294), with each having a t Results: During the Covid-19 pandemic, economic worries increased, and mental health decreased. However, the mediation by economic worries reduced by approx. 18.0% (e.g., from 35.0% to 28.9%). A decreased indirect effect caused the reduction in mediation, while the direct and interacted effect remained rather stable. We also found stark gender differences towards males having a higher total effect but a lower mediated effect during the Covid-19 pandemic. Conclusion: Our results highlight that mediators competing to economic worries must have emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic. Such mediators could be the risk of infection at the workplace, the possibility of remote work, and gender-specific mediators. Our study is also the first to extend the mediational g-formula with the difference-in-difference approach. It can be used as a blueprint for researchers interested in evaluating the impact of events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, on preexisting processes. Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. (© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.) |
| Databáze: | MEDLINE |
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