TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Caliendo, Marco
AU  - Graeber, Daniel
AU  - Kritikos, Alexander S.
AU  - Seebauer, Johannes
        TI  - Pandemic Depression: COVID-19 and the Mental Health of the Self-Employed
        PY  - 2022/Apr/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 15260
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp15260
        AB  - We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-employed people's mental health. Using representative longitudinal survey data from Germany, we reveal differential effects by gender: whereas self-employed women experienced a substantial deterioration in their mental health, self-employed men displayed no significant changes up to early 2021. Financial losses are important in explaining these differences. In addition, we find larger mental health responses among self-employed women who were directly affected by government-imposed restrictions and bore an increased childcare burden due to school and daycare closures. We also find that self-employed individuals who are more resilient coped better with the crisis.

        KW  - self-employment
KW  - PHQ-4 score
KW  - representative longitudinal survey data
KW  - mental health
KW  - resilience
KW  - gender
KW  - COVID-19
        ER  -