Zero-COVID Policies: Melbourne’s 112-Day Hard Lockdown Experiment Harmed Mostly Mothers

Abstract

Lockdowns were used worldwide to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2. We demonstrate that the 112-day hard lockdown in Melbourne, Australia, the longest among OECD jurisdictions, exclusively penalized families with young children. To identify the causal impact of lockdown, we interrogated nationally-representative longitudinal survey data and exploited quasi-experimental variation in Melbourne's lockdown, one that left other jurisdictions unaffected. Using difference-in-differences estimation, we found that, surprisingly, most vulnerable groups (the young, poor, lonely and those with previous mental health conditions) were left unscathed. However, we found mothers experienced significant, sizable declines in health and work hours, and increases in loneliness, despite feeling safer and being more active. Zero-COVID policies are not as harmful as may have been expected but came at high cost to mothers in society.

The Economic Impacts of the COVID‐19 Pandemic in Australia: A Closer Look at Gender Gaps in Employment, Earnings and Education

“…While the scope of this analysis is confined to labour market experiences, the impacts of the pandemic clearly extend to many other outcomes, including mental health, vulnerability to domestic violence and various other components of well‐being that are explored by scholars in the research community. Among the gender‐patterned impacts, a growing body of research highlights the additional ‘mental load’ that the pandemic has especially placed on mothers with young children (Dean, Churchill and Ruppanner 2022; Schurer et al 2022). Other analyses point to the higher incidence of psychological distress experienced by fathers with young children during lockdowns (Broadway, Mendez and Moschion 2020).…”