Well-being in Europe: Addressing the high cost of COVID-19 on life satisfaction
As leaders across Europe turn their attention to ensuring a safe and rapid recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, they are right to focus on promoting economic growth while preventing further loss of life. A prolonged downturn could permanently hamper countries’ future growth, with the resulting income and job losses likely to disproportionately impact the most vulnerable in society. Fresh research shows why leaders can’t afford to ignore another critical and underappreciated consequence of the pandemic: the toll on happiness.1
Average life satisfaction in Europe, which has consistently led the world in well-being, fell to the lowest level since 1980 in April.2 People across the continent have suffered a major blow from COVID-19 and the measures to curb its spread. The drop in satisfaction is only partly explained by the losses that people have experienced in their income or job security. Indeed, the crisis has extracted an especially high toll when it comes to how people feel about their health and their relationships—with reports of depression and loneliness doubling, tripling, or even quintupling over previous norms.
One way to grasp the magnitude of the change is to express it in monetary terms. When we do this, we find that the pandemic’s negative impact on well-being in April was up to 3.5 times the losses experienced in GDP (Exhibit 1). While some of the negative effects are likely to dissipate as countries start to relax virus-related restrictions, others are likely to have caused permanent scars. Even a few weeks of reduced physical exercise, heightened stress and anxiety, or limited access to diagnostics and care are likely to have longer-term health consequences for some people. Moreover, a recurrence of the virus might necessitate new or reinstituted physical-distancing measures.
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Πηγή: mckinsey.com
