IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/apeclt/v30y2023i3p391-396.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Financial hardship and depression experienced by pre-retirees during the COVID-19 pandemic: the mitigating role of stimulus payments

Author

Listed:
  • Yingyi Liu
  • Yu Zhang
  • Swarn Chatterjee

Abstract

This study examines the association between financial hardship and depression among pre-retirees (ages 50 to 65) using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and its 2020 COVID-19 supplement. We find a negative association between the amount of stimulus received and financial hardship experienced by respondents during the pandemic. Additionally, the results indicate that African American households were less likely to increase spending, Hispanic households were more likely to increase savings, and households with lower educational attainment were more likely to pay down debt using their stimulus money. Financial wealth was negatively associated with the perception of feeling depressed. Overall, the findings from this study underscore the important role that the stimulus checks and other financial resources played in buffering the economic shock experienced by American households during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Yingyi Liu & Yu Zhang & Swarn Chatterjee, 2023. "Financial hardship and depression experienced by pre-retirees during the COVID-19 pandemic: the mitigating role of stimulus payments," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(3), pages 391-396, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:30:y:2023:i:3:p:391-396
    DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2021.1989364
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2021.1989364
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13504851.2021.1989364?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:30:y:2023:i:3:p:391-396. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEL20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.