Gender differences in COVID-19 attitudes and behavior: Panel evidence from eight countries
By Vincenzo Galasso, V. Pons, P. Profeta, Michael Becher, S. Brouard, M. Foucault. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020
718 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Significance Public health response to COVID-19 requires behavior changes—isolation at home, wearing masks. Its effectiveness depends on generalized compliance. Original data from two waves of a survey conducted in March−April 2020 in eight Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (n = 21,649) show large gender differences in COVID-19−related beliefs and behaviors. Women are more likely to perceive the pandemic as a very serious health problem and to agree and comply with restraining measures. These differences are only partially mitigated for individuals cohabiting or directly exposed to COVID-19. This behavioral factor contributes to substantial gender differences in mortality and is consistent with women-led countries responding more effectively to the pandemic. It calls for gender-based public health policies and communication. The initial public health response to the breakout of COVID-19 required fundamental changes in individual behavior, such as isolation at home or wearing masks. The effectiveness of these policies hinges on generalized public obedience. Yet, people’s level of compliance may depend on their beliefs regarding the pandemic. We use original data from two waves of a survey conducted in March and April 2020 in eight Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (n = 21,649) to study gender differences in COVID-19−related beliefs and behaviors. We show that women are more likely to perceive COVID-19 as a very serious health problem, to agree with restraining public policy measures, and to comply with them. Gender differences in attitudes and behavior are sizable in all countries. They are accounted for neither by sociodemographic and employment characteristics nor by psychological and behavioral factors. They are only partially mitigated for individuals who cohabit or have direct exposure to the virus. We show that our results are not due to differential social desirability bias. This evidence has important implications for public health policies and communication on COVID-19, which may need to be gender based, and it unveils a domain of gender differences: behavioral changes in response to a new risk.
Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Economics and Econometrics, Modeling and Simulation
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5ed667a8fee68c8eca145024136bcc89af91489f
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Citations in the corpus
- A literature review of the economics of COVID‐19 (2020, background): “Galasso et al. (2020) rely on survey data from eight OECD countries and provide evidence that women are more likely than men to agree with restrictive public policy measures and to comply with them.”
- Gender inequality in COVID-19 times: evidence from UK prolific participants (2020, positive): “Second, women exhibited more concerns about getting and spreading the virus (12% and 8% higher than men, respectively), consistent with Galasso et al. (2020) who found that women were more likely to see COVID-19 as a serious health problem.”