The effects of COVID-19-era unemployment and business closures upon the physical and mental health of older Europeans : Mediation through financial circumstances and social activity

COVID-19-era lockdown policies resulted in many older persons entering unemployment, facing financial difficulties and social restrictions, and experiencing declining health. Employing the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe's first COVID-19 module (summer 2020) (N = 11,231) and the Karlson-Holm-Breen method for decomposition of effects within non-linear probability models (logistic regression modelling), we examined associations of pandemic-era lost work with older Europeans' (50–80 years of age) self-assessed health, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms, and mediation through households' difficulties making ends meet, loneliness, and curtailed face-to-face contact with …