Indirect consequences of COVID-19 on people’s lives. Findings from an on-line survey in France, Italy and Spain

The COVID-19 pandemic has limited individuals’ possibility to meet and socialize with others due to the state of emergency restrictions to movements, events and relations imposed in different countries. Most shops and restaurants have been closed and some economic activities have been seriously damaged. This significant disruption may have contributed to a deterioration of people’s mental health on top of other negative consequences of the pandemic. To better understand the indirect consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak on people’s lives we have designed the intergen-COVID online survey (https://sites.google.com/unifi.it/intergen-covid), carried out in France, Italy and Spain between the 14th to the 24th of April 2020. Quota sampling on the population 18-plus and post-stratification weights were used to achieve the alignment between the sample (N = 9,056) and the total population on important socio-demographic characteristics. We collected information on four key domains of individuals’ lives: intergenerational (and other type of) relationships (physical and non-physical; means of communication; frequency, etc.); living arrangements; mental health; events experienced during the lockdown (e.g., income loss, death of relative/friend due to COVID-19, worsened partner relationships, time spent with family); intentions for the future 3 years (e.g., fertility, living parental home, marriage, cohabitation, divorce/separation, retirement). In this paper we provide the main results from this survey, focusing on the first three domains abovementioned. The fourth domain consists of questions applicable to different sub-groups of the population and will be analyzed in separate papers. We show that, despite the general reduction of physical contacts, with low educated people reporting a lower reduction in all kinds of physical contacts, non-physical contacts have significantly increased, especially among women. About 50% of respondents felt sad or depressed more often than usual during the lockdown, but mental health deterioration was found to be heterogeneous and vary with respondents’ age, gender and country. Job and income loss, and worsening of relationships quality were other negative consequences often experienced during the lockdown, especially by younger individuals. Finally, although maintaining physical distance, during the lockdown people have experienced a high level of social connection, emotional support and practical help.