My home is my castle? The role of living arrangements on experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, social restrictions and social distancing policies forced large parts of social life to take place within the household. However, comparatively little is known about how private living situations shaped individuals experiences of this crisis. To investigate this issue, we analyze how experiences and concerns vary across living arrangements along two dimensions that may be associated with social disadvantage: loneliness and care. In doing so, we employ quantitative text analysis on open-ended questions from survey data on a sample of 1,073 individuals living in Germany. We focus our analyses on four different household structures: living alone, shared living without children, living with a partner and children, and single parents. We find that single parents (who are primarily single mothers) are at high risk of experiencing care-related worries, particularly regarding their financial situation, while individuals living alone are most likely to report feelings of loneliness. Those individuals living in shared houses, with or without children, had the lowest risk of experiencing both loneliness and care-related worries. These findings illustrate that the living situation at home substantially impacts how individuals experienced and coped with the pandemic situation during the first wave of the pandemic.

在德国新冠疫情初期几个月，社会限制和社交距离政策迫使大量社会生活发生在家庭内部。然而，关于私人居住环境如何塑造个体对这一危机的经历，了解相对较少。为探究这一问题，我们分析了个体经历和担忧如何在不同居住安排中变化，这些安排可能与社会劣势相关：孤独和照顾。为此，我们对来自德国1073个个体调查数据的开放式问题进行了定量文本分析。我们的分析聚焦于四种不同的家庭结构：独居、无子女的合住、与伴侣及子女同住，以及单身父母。我们发现，单身父母（主要是单身母亲）面临极高的照顾相关担忧风险，尤其是关于其财务状况，而独居者最有可能报告孤独感。那些居住在共有住宅中，无论有无子女的个体，经历孤独和照顾相关担忧的风险最低。这些发现表明，家庭居住状况对个体在疫情第一波期间经历和应对疫情情况有显著影响。