Title: Analysis of subjective well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic period in Japan
Abstract:

The unexpected emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 impacted all industries
worldwide. The tourism, airline, and service industries have taken a hit, and the global
economy has slowed significantly. Accordingly, the pandemic not only hurts people's
physical health, but can also have a dramatic impact on mental health and well-being.
This paper will discuss the effects of various elements on people's well-being in thechronological order of how the COVID 19 pandemic developed in Japan. The dataset
used in this thesis come from the Happiness Survey which began in December 2019 andcovered more than 20,000 respondents across Japan, excluding Okinawa. Seven surveys
have been conducted so far. The time duration of this survey overlapped with the COVID19 pandemic in Japan, with the first wave of the survey just prior to the COVID-19
outbreak and the subsequent surveys lying during COVID-19. The temporalcharacteristics of this dataset provide a good opportunity to investigate the changes of thesubjective well-being of Japanese people and correlated factors during the COVID-19
pandemic.
Using this dataset, we mainly make analysis on subjective well-being (SWB) fromthree aspects. The first applied a Bayesian hierarchical model to the SWB, supposing thatwell-being is decomposed into regional and individual factors. As a result, regional
heteroscedasticity and individual factors are identified jointly. From the identified
regional factors in prefectural levels, we find that Social Welfare Expenditure (SWE) per
capita and Ratio of Forest Area (RFA) are positively related with SWB. Some prefecturesin Capital Region, which are at the bottom of happiness ranking, are correlated with lower
SWE and FRA. In addition, coastal areas in Tohoku region damaged by the 2011 tsunami
and nuclear plant accidents also have relatively lower subjective well-being.
The second uses happiness surveys for around 26, 000 respondents all over Japan
except Okinawa on the five periods in Dec. 2019, Sep. 2020, Dec. 2020, Mar. 2021 andJun. 2021. We applied a dynamic regression model that describes joint effects ofindividual and spatial factors to visualize space-time behaviors of Japanese subjective
well-being. Namely we quantified the factors of happiness driven by individual factors,
which are age, gender, income and so on, and those by spatial factors in prefectural levels
after controlling the individual ones. Examining the dynamic changes on the five periods,
we find that the COVID-19 outbreak in Japan has damaged the SWB of young females
most seriously and the crucial damages still are continuing especially for the low-income
group.
The last one explores subjective well-being of 24,808 Japanese from 46 prefectures inDecember 2021. Two years since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Japan, the average SWBof Japanese fell dramatically, the number of very happy people declined while the numberof very unhappy people grew. We apply quantile regression to examine the impact ofsocial connection, prosocial behaviors, health-related variables, on different quantiles ofSWB. The result show that social connection is vital in all populations’ SWB during thepandemic. The benefits of communication with family are detected at the whole SWB
distribution, while contact with friends and neighbors only show positive effect at thelower quantiles of SWB with smaller coefficients. In addition, we find that people at thelower quantiles of the SWB distribution are more “mentally vulnerable” than those at theupper quantiles. After controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, we find that they
are more likely to be harmed by risk factors (e.g., job loss, smoking, diabetes,
hypertension) but it is harder for them to benefit from protective factors (e.g., prosocialbehaviors, meditation) on their SWB. Given the persistence of the COVID-19 pandemicand consequent physical distancing policy, the influence of COVID-19 will continue toinfluence the SWB of the whole Japanese, but not equally. Therefore, the less happy
people can learn a lot from the very happy individuals to protect themselves and improvetheir well-being.