IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/30988.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Long Covid in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • David G. Blanchflower
  • Alex Bryson

Abstract

Although yet to be clearly identified as a clinical condition, there is immense concern at the health and wellbeing consequences of long COVID. Using data collected from nearly half a million Americans in the period June 2022-December 2022 in the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS), we find 14 percent reported suffering long COVID at some point, half of whom reported it at the time of the survey. It peaks in midlife in the same way as negative affect. Ever having had long COVID is strongly associated with negative affect (anxiety, depression, worry and a lack of interest in things). The effect is larger among those who currently report long COVID, especially if they report severe symptoms. In contrast, those who report having had short COVID report higher wellbeing than those who report never having had COVID. Long COVID is also strongly associated with physical mobility problems, and with problems dressing and bathing. It is also associated with mental problems as indicated by recall and understanding difficulties. Again, the associations are strongest among those who currently report long COVID, while those who said they had had short COVID have fewer physical and mental problems than those who report never having had COVID. Vaccination is associated with lower negative affect, including among those who reported having had long COVID.

Suggested Citation

  • David G. Blanchflower & Alex Bryson, 2023. "Long Covid in the United States," NBER Working Papers 30988, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30988
    Note: EH LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w30988.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David G. Blanchflower & Carol L. Graham, 2022. "The Mid-Life Dip in Well-Being: a Critique," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 161(1), pages 287-344, May.
    2. Blanchflower, David, 2020. "Experienced Life Cycle Satisfaction in Europe: A Comment," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 7(2), pages 197-200, May.
    3. Brendan M. Price, 2022. "Long COVID, Cognitive Impairment, and the Stalled Decline in Disability Rates," FEDS Notes 2022-08-05-2, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David Blanchflower & Alex Bryson, 2024. "The Gender Well-Being Gap," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 173(3), pages 1-45, July.
    2. Blanchflower, David G. & Bryson, Alex, 2023. "Were COVID and the Great Recession Well-Being Reducing?," IZA Discussion Papers 16355, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Biermann, Philipp & Bitzer, Jürgen & Gören, Erkan, 2022. "The relationship between age and subjective well-being: Estimating within and between effects simultaneously," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 21(C).
    2. Blanchflower, David G. & Bryson, Alex, 2022. "Taking the pulse of nations: A biometric measure of well-being," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    3. David G. Blanchflower & Carol L. Graham, 2022. "The Mid-Life Dip in Well-Being: a Critique," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 161(1), pages 287-344, May.
    4. David N. F. Bell & David G. Blanchflower, 2021. "The U‐shape of happiness in Scotland," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 68(4), pages 407-433, September.
    5. David G. Blanchflower & Alex Bryson, 2021. "Biden, COVID and Mental Health in America," DoQSS Working Papers 21-21, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    6. Jürgen Bitzer & Erkan Gören & Heinz Welsch, 2024. "How the wellbeing function varies with age: the importance of income, health and social relations over the lifecycle," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 91(363), pages 809-836, July.
    7. Jerome H. Powell, 2022. "Inflation and the Labor Market: At the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. November 30th 2022," Speech 95821, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    8. Dawid Gondek & Laura Bernardi & Eoin McElroy & Chiara L. Comolli, 2024. "Why do Middle-Aged Adults Report Worse Mental Health and Wellbeing than Younger Adults? An Exploratory Network Analysis of the Swiss Household Panel Data," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 19(4), pages 1459-1500, August.
    9. Blanchflower, David G. & Bryson, Alex, 2023. "Labour Market Expectations and Unemployment in Europe," IZA Discussion Papers 15905, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Piper, Alan, 2023. "Age and Happiness," MPRA Paper 117556, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Blanchflower, David G. & Piper, Alan, 2022. "There is a mid-life low in well-being in Germany," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    12. David G Blanchflower & Alex Bryson, 2022. "Further decoding the mystery of American pain: The importance of work," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(1), pages 1-16, January.
    13. Piper, Alan, 2024. "In a dark wood: an exploration of the midlife low in human wellbeing and a research agenda," MPRA Paper 121612, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    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:nbr:nberwo:30988. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.