Mental health costs of lockdown compliance still being felt, research shows
The more strictly people complied with Covid restrictions during the pandemic, the worse their mental health today, new research has found.
The analysis by researchers from Bangor University looked at the behaviour of around 1700 people during the Covid restrictions in relation to their personality traits and their post-pandemic recovery. The study aimed to answer three broad questions: who follows health advice, what can be done to improve compliance; and what are the costs for those who comply?
The team found that those who were more sensitive to the needs of others were more likely to have complied with lockdown rules and health advice, compared to those who were more focused on their own needs and priorities.
However, they also found that those who reported high levels of compliance with Covid restrictions and were most worried about infection during the pandemic are least likely to have resumed normal behaviour and more likely to be experiencing stress, anxiety and depression now.
Dr Marley Willegers, from the Institute for the Psychology of Elite Performance (IPEP) at Bangor University, said: “There was naturally a lot of focus on getting public health messages out when Covid first emerged, to change people’s behaviour. Similarly, throughout the pandemic, messaging campaigns were designed to ensure people continued to follow the rules. But there was no messaging campaign as we came out of the pandemic to help everyone safely transition back to normality. Without this, certain personality types have retained infection prevention behaviour and anxiety that undermines their mental wellbeing.”
The study involved over 1700 people, recruited through Healthwise Wales, who were asked earlier this year to answer questions about their personality traits and their attitudes to Covid and behaviour during the first lockdown (March-September 2020). The researchers also questioned 230 people who were friends or family of those involved in the study, to cross check respondents’ recollections of their behaviour with others who knew them well.
The team followed up with 850 of those who’d taken part, asking them to report their levels of well-being, stress, anxiety, depression and infection prevention every two weeks over a three-month period between February and May 2023.
They categorised each person in relation to two types of personality trait – those who are more focused on what affects them (agentic personalities) and those who are more focused on what affects others (communal personalities). In general, the former were less likely to have complied with Covid rules, except where they felt under personal threat of infection. Conversely, communal personalities were less likely to improve their compliance with health advice as the threat of infection increased, possibly due to them taking personal risks to help others.
The researchers found, regardless of personality, higher levels of compliance with Covid rules during the pandemic (March-September 2020) predicted lower current levels of well-being (Feb-March 2023). In other words, the more people complied with Covid rules during the pandemic, the worse their wellbeing emerged in the aftermath.
Dr Willegers said: “It’s clear from our research that if government advertising campaigns want to change the public’s behaviour, they need to take both personality types into account. Campaigns need to highlight the personal costs and benefits involved not just people’s responsibility to others.”
One example the researchers point to is the introduction of the 20mph limit in Wales. The existing campaign to inform the public of the speed limit change, which focuses primarily on the lives potentially saved by driving slower is unlikely to encourage compliance from more agentic personalities. A broader campaign, which also focuses on personal costs and benefits of compliance with the change would target a wider range of personality types more effectively, the researchers say.
The full report ‘The effect of agency and communion on pandemic response and post-lockdown recovery’ is published by Bangor University
Families already in crisis facing real terms drop in income, research shows
The cost of living crisis is hitting hardest on low-income families with children, with benefits failing to keep up, says new research from the University of York.
Drawing on the testimonies of over 100 families and analysis by the Resolution Foundation, the researchers show how the crisis is far from over for low-income families as winter approaches.
The new report is published by the Changing Realities project, a collaboration between parents and carers, researchers at the universities of Salford and York, and Child Poverty Action Group.
It calls on the Chancellor to address the crisis facing families in his forthcoming autumn statement, by increasing benefits in line with inflation and ending the freeze on the Local Housing Allowance. The report also calls for an end to one-off, flat rate, emergency payments and for these to be replaced with long-term investment and support.
Ruth Patrick, Professor of Social Policy at the University of York, who leads the Changing Realities project, said: “Our new analysis makes clear just how vulnerable the poorest households are to continued high prices. Those with the least spend the greatest proportion of their income on food, energy and housing, and have completely run out of places to cut back. Families face a constant, daily crisis as they struggle to make ends meet, and are terrified of how they will survive this winter. The Government must act, and uprating benefits in line with inflation is a vital first step to providing families with more security this winter.”
The report shows why low-income families are especially vulnerable to the high prices of essential items and how the cost of living payments paid to date have left them at a disadvantage.
In the year preceding the pandemic, the lowest-income families with children spent nearly half their income on areas where it is almost impossible and detrimental to cut back on spending, such as food, housing, water and electricity. Food costs alone accounted for a fifth of their household income. These areas are also where prices have remained high, with food inflation in September 2023 at 12.2%.
The cost-of-living payments from government to help low-income households have mainly been through one-off, flat rate payments. This means that a single person receives the same as a family of five. Single-person households saw their income rise by 6% thanks to these payments, whereas for families with two or three children, the increase was just 3.3%. Although this enabled the lowest-income families to avoid catastrophic falls in their income in real terms, with no further cost of living payments planned, they are now set to see a real-term fall in income of around 3% this year.
University of York researchers spoke to over 100 parents and carers through the Changing Realities project, funded by the abrdn Financial Fairness Trust. Their testimony underscores the ongoing reality of the cost of living crisis for these families: rising prices, static incomes and the anxiety they feel as they approach another winter, with no remaining areas left to cut in their spending.
Sadie, a mother of three involved in the project, said: “Things are still creeping up.... there are fewer options for making any more cuts now. And as my children get older, there are bigger costs associated with them. It still feels very overwhelming.”
Roxy, another parent taking part in the project agreed: “No bills have come down...Food shopping hasn't come down. We're just having to survive any way we can. It's definitely not getting any better, if not worse.”
The Changing Realities project team worked with the families to develop recommendations for government, including:
Increase benefits at least by inflation
Restore Local Housing Allowance, frozen since April 2020, to better reflect market rents
Replace flat rate and one-off payments with longer-term investments
Abolish policies such as the two-child limit and benefit cap which punish families with children
Alison Garnhan, Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said: “On a graph the inflation line is dipping but on the ground there is absolutely no let-up for low-income families and 4.2 million children are living in poverty. Prices are still rising. People are deciding now how best to deal with the hunger and cold to come. A real-terms income cut next April would be unmanageable for these families. The Chancellor must do right by children and commit to an inflation-based benefit increase. To do otherwise would be reckless.”
Benchtop NMR spectroscopy can accurately analyse pyrolysis oils
A team of researchers at Aston University has demonstrated that benchtop spectrometers are capable of analysing pyrolysis bio-oils just as well as far more expensive, high-field spectrometers.
Bio-oils resulting from the intense heating (pyrolysis) of industrial or agricultural by-products, are increasingly seen as potential alternatives to fossil fuels. But the stability and consequent treatment of these bio-oils depends entirely on their composition; and since they are often mixtures of many dozens, or hundreds, of different compounds, analysing such complex mixtures is not simple – or cheap.
Dr Robert Evans, Senior Lecturer in Physical Chemistry at Aston University, explains: “The composition of any pyrolysis bio-oil is absolutely key to future use. For example if there are oxygen-containing chemicals in the oil, that will make the oil more corrosive and it will be more unstable. So in particular we need to know if carbonyl groups are present – where oxygen and carbon atoms are bonded together – as these can have a major impact.”
A leading method of analysis is high-field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, which gives a detailed breakdown of the identity and concentration of chemical species present in any sample. However these large high-field NMR spectrometry machines cost in the range of £600,000-£10million and require a supply of expensive cryogens and solvents, so are generally only found in the very biggest research facilities.
The team at Aston, led by Dr Evans, set out to see if ‘low-field’, or benchtop, NMR spectrometers, could analyse pyrolysis oils well enough to produce the necessary detailed information. Benchtop NMR spectrometers use permanent magnets, which don’t require cryogenic cooling, so cost much less to purchase and maintain. However, using lower strength magnets comes at the cost of lower sensitivity and poorer resolution. While they can find some use as research instruments, they are also commonly found in teaching laboratories.
The study, carried out with collaborators at the University of Tennessee, tested pyrolysis oils produced from a number of different plants, and compared the results from benchtop spectrometers to both high-field spectrometers and other methods of analysis. They found that the benchtop machine estimates compared favourably with titration analysis for overall carbonyl content, as well as matching high-field spectrometry for the specific identification of carbonyl groups such as ketones, aldehydes and quinones.
Dr Evans said: “Despite the known limitations of benchtop spectrometers, a very similar quality of NMR data could be obtained for these samples, enough to accurately estimate concentrations of different classes of carbonyl-containing species. Using benchtop spectrometers will make NMR analysis of pyrolysis oils much simpler, cheaper, and more accessible to a wider range of different users.”
Quantitative Low-Field 19F NMR Analysis of Carbonyl Groups in Pyrolysis Oils is published online today in ChemSusChem, a journal of Chemistry Europe.
Mental health of children suffered during pandemic
The scale of the mental health crisis among children during the Covid-19 pandemic has been revealed by new analysis of NHS data.
Prescriptions for mental health conditions among children in the north-east of Scotland were 59% higher in 2021 compared to six years earlier, according to the research. Prescriptions rose by 24% between 2020 and 2021 alone.
Referrals of children to see outpatient mental health specialists increased by 9% between 2015 and 2021, but rose steeply since the pandemic. The most pronounced rise in referrals was among teenage girls which were 35% higher in 2021.
The results are due to be presented at the first ever Health and Care Analytics Conference, which is taking place in Birmingham on 11-12 July.
While the study examined data from mental health services for children aged 2-17 years old in the Grampian region of NHS Scotland, the researchers say the findings reflect similar trends in other parts of the UK.
“There has been a lot of concern about children’s wellbeing post-pandemic and the data does seem to reflect this,” said Dr Jessica Butler, Lead Data Scientist for NHS Grampian and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen, who led the study.
“The rate of referrals of children to specialists was steady pre-pandemic, but we see a rise post-lockdown. It’s clear that it is steepest among the older children, and particularly older girls, where we see the biggest rise in referrals.”
The research also highlighted other differences between the sexes, ages and residential areas. For example, the rate of prescribing and referrals to specialists in the most deprived areas was double that in the least deprived. Prescriptions of mental health drugs to boys were twice as high as those for girls, with the majority of the drugs being given to young boys to treat ADHD. The prescription rate to girls, however, rose steeply after puberty, mainly to treat depression.
The study highlights just how useful information within NHS databases can be to identify potential changes in patient need and help health services allocate resources, but also reveals its limitations.
Dr Butler and her team were able to examine anonymised data contained within NHS Scotland databases in the Grampian region for their research. But they said this only reflects one side of those dealing with children who are struggling with their mental health. Local authorities, social workers, teachers and police will also support children.
Butler and her team have created software that is freely available to allow other NHS services to carry out their own analysis.
The research was conducted as part of a project by the Health Foundation’s Networked Data Lab examining children and young people’s mental health in England, Scotland and Wales. Five teams around the country used anonymised, high security data held in their local NHS databases.
The full research being presented at the conference was published earlier this year in BMC Psychiatry: https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-022-04438-5
Mixing with better educated families improves life chances of lower income children
Children from low education backgrounds are more likely to enrol in ‘elite’ degree programmes that lead to high paying jobs if they go to school with children whose parents have those degrees themselves, says new research.
These high-paying degrees, such as medicine, economics and law from top universities (Ivy League equivalents), lead to higher lifetime earnings for graduates. This means the findings could be useful for shaping government policy to increase social mobility, say researchers.
The study of Norwegian schoolchildren found that classes where children from both low- and high-education families are more equally mixed have higher enrolment in elite programmes at top universities, equivalent to studying subjects like medicine or law at Ivy League institutions (US) or Oxford and Cambridge (UK).
The research was carried out by Professor Emma Tominey from the University of York, Dr Sarah Cattan from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, and Professor Kjell Salvanes from the Norwegian School of Economics. It is being presented today [07 June] by Professor Tominey at the Society of the Economics of the Household (SEHO) conference in Copenhagen.
In Norway, higher education is free and there are no private schools. Yet, inequalities in higher education are stark: nearly half of those attending elite institutions come from families in the top 20% of earnings, whereas only 7% come from the lowest 20%. In Norway, children’s educational records can be linked to data on their parents, including occupation, education and income. The researchers analysed data on nearly 180,000 schoolchildren who started high school between 2002 and 2012.
The researchers were able to track these children through school, onto university (where relevant) and onto the labour market. Only 3% of students in Norway study subjects such as medicine, law, economics or engineering at the top institutions – programmes which lead to the greatest earnings in Norway.
The researchers particularly looked at two groups of students: those from lower income families whose parents did not have an elite degree and where at least one parent had no further education beyond school; and those students who had at least one parent who had achieved one of the top medical, engineering, law or economics degrees.
In a school cohort, the greater the number of students whose parents had an elite degree, the more likely it was that both groups would enrol on an elite programme themselves. The presence of the more affluent students had two main effects on lower income students: it lowered their grades in some exams but increased their likelihood of applying to one of the top degree programmes. The second factor was the stronger force, leading to them being more likely to enrol into an elite degree and for students from a low educated background, to become the first in their families to do so.
The researchers found that the effect of ‘elite peers’ was to improve grades of lower income students when exams were externally ‘blind’ marked. But when grades were teacher-assessed, the effect was that lower income students were marked down, creating a negative effect on overall grades.
In the UK, students who attend private secondary schools are around 100 times more likely to attend Oxford or Cambridge than students who are eligible for free school meals. The university a student attends can make a substantial difference to their career prospects and lifetime earnings. According to Department of Education figures from 2017, graduates of business, computing or law degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Economics and Imperial College London earn more than double the typical UK salary within five years of graduating.
Professor Tominey believes that governments should consider policies that could ensure greater integration between students from different economic backgrounds as a means of increasing social mobility.
She said: “The UK’s state school system is currently very segregated by income, with little mixing between children from lower and higher income families. Our research shows how important it is for students to mix with others who have experience of these elite institutions, whose parents have attended them, and who can therefore act both as role models and as a source of information about that academic route.
“In policy terms, this is something that is within the power of government to influence, by changing how school places are allocated to ensure a more even mix of students from different economic and educational backgrounds. While this would not necessarily be easy to implement, it could have a major impact on social mobility and educational equality.”
Personal finances increasingly play second fiddle to personality, finds study
Personality has become a more important factor than finances when it comes to dating, a new study has found.
Researchers from the University of York and the University of Essex analysed more than a million lonely hearts ads and found that in the USA, France, and Canada, there was a sharp decline in economic factors when choosing a partner. However, finances remained an important issue in India when it came to relationships.
To see how partner preferences changed over time, the researchers analysed lonely hearts ads from various major news outlets from Canada, France, and India. They collected data from publications from 1950 to 1995, the year that most of these ads shifted to being online. Also, they also looked at ads from 41 regional newspapers from Canada and the USA in 1995.
The researchers analysed the language of these ads and categorised them into four distinct preferences.
The first of these was economic, which focused on a potential partner’s financial situation. The second was personality, which covered traits such as openness or extroversion. The third category was physical, in which ads expressed a preference for body types, and the final was taste, which covered issues like hobbies or habits.
This allowed the researchers to identify broader trends of how partner preferences changed over time in a range of countries.
The researchers found that between 1950 and 1995, personality played a much greater role in partner preference in Western countries, while economic factors declined in importance, particularly after the 1960s. However, in India, finances remained a key issue for people searching for love, becoming more prominent after 1970, while personality factors remained stable.
In the sample of ads from Canada and the USA, by 1995 around 40-45% of the words used by women to describe their ideal partner related to personality criteria. At the same time, only around 10% mentioned finances. Similarly, 35-40% of words in lonely hearts ads placed by men by 1995 focused on personality traits, while only 5% were related to economic factors.
The researchers found that up until the 1970s, the share of words relating to finances in Indian ads remained stable at around 35%, but after the 1970s this started to rise. By 1995, this had increased to around 60%.
There was some gender disparity in the data from the ads, with a greater rise in the importance of economic factors in ads placed by women than those placed by men.
Study co-author Khushboo Surana, from the University of York, said: “The data we have found supports Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs. In this framework, material needs – i.e. financial factors – have to be satisfied before you can focus on the immaterial ones, such as personality traits. It is possible that unlike in the west, people’s first order needs still haven’t been satisfied, which is why we see a focus on economic criteria.”
Co-researcher Quentin Lippmann, from the University of Essex, also argued that “Our study shows personality becoming more and more important in western countries such as the United States, but we don’t see the same trend in India. Once India’s economy develops further, and the current generation are more secure financially, they may show a change in preference for personality factors as well. This would align them with the trends we see in the western countries we sampled.”
This research is being presented today at the Royal Economic Society annual conference in Glasgow.
New study shows gap between rich and poor has increased more quickly in the US than in Europe
Wealth inequality in the United States has increased more quickly than in Europe in the last 50 years, partly due to significant rises in stock market prices, according to a new study from Imperial College Business School, published in the Journal of Monetary Economics.
They are calling for action to be taken by governments and policy makers in the US, to boost wages at the lower end of the market, control unemployment, and stabilise house prices.
Researchers from Imperial and the Paris School of Economics drew on new economic data from which they could build a database of the distribution of wealth for most European countries for the first time. This brought the data in line with the available US financial figures and allowed them to compare the change in both total household wealth and wealth inequality in Europe and the United States since the 1970s to the present day, as well as working out the reasons for those changes.
The researchers found that although both regions had a similar steady growth in total household wealth, the way the wealth had been distributed has been markedly different since the 1980s.
Dr Clara Martínez-Toledano, Assistant Professor in Finance at Imperial College Business School, and one of the lead authors of the study said: “From the 1980s we see a wealth gap start to emerge, where there’s a more dramatic change in the United States. The wealth that the top 1% richest people own in the States has undergone a significantly larger increase than the top 1% richest in Europe – in other words, the gap between rich and poor in the US became much more pronounced as wealthy Americans became even richer.”
To discover why this gap emerged, the researchers broke wealth down into three key drivers: differences in saving rates; wages; and capital gains rates.
During the decades surveyed, the research showed that house prices had gone up dramatically in both regions, as had financial asset prices. However, stock market prices had increased much faster in the US than in Europe.
Dr Martínez-Toledano continued: “Differences in the composition of these assets across wealth groups is key. The richest people tend to own financial assets such as stocks and bonds, while the middle wealth groups tend to have a house as their major asset. But even with a big growth in house prices in both regions, stock market prices were the standout distinguishing factor, with a huge jump in value of US stocks during those decades.“
Another important factor that can explain the wealth gap between rich and poor in the US is inequality of labour income, with the US economy showing a much bigger contrast in pay between the lowest and highest paid workers than the European economies over the same time period.
To document these findings, the researchers ran simulations that substituted the labour income inequality and asset price trajectories from France into the US figures. They found the hypothetical US wealth concentration levels were lower as a result of the smaller rise in labour income inequality and the larger rise in house prices relative to financial assets in Europe. The results were similar when they substituted the same figures from other European countries into the US data.
The researchers say US policymakers should prioritise job market policies that are aimed at boosting wages at the lower end of the distribution to reduce wealth inequality. They also call on central banks to play a key role in stabilising house prices.
Dr Martínez-Toledano explains: “Less equal societies have less stable economies. High levels of economic inequality can lead to economic and political instability. This is why action needs to be taken before societies become polarised.”
The new Distribution Wealth Accounts for Europe database is already available on wid.world for other researchers to build on this work, with the researchers planning regular updates to stay informed about the state of wealth inequality in Europe and the US.
The project forms part of a bigger international drive by the World Inequality Lab to provide more comprehensive public information about wealth and income inequality across the world.
Wealth inequality dynamics in Europe and the United States: Understanding the determinants is published in the Journal of Monetary Economics.