García Prado, AriadnaGonzález, PaulaRebollo Sanz, Yolanda2022-07-152022-07-152022García-Prado, A.; González, P.; Rebollo-Sanz, Y. F. (2022). Lockdown strictness and mental health effects among older populations in Europe. Economics and Human Biology 45, 1-181570-677X10.1016/j.ehb.2022.101116https://academica-e.unavarra.es/handle/2454/43320This paper investigates whether lockdown policies aggravated mental health problems of older populations (50 and over) in Europe during the first COVID-19 wave. Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE COVID-19 questionnaire) and from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker for 17 countries, we estimate the causal effect of lockdown policies on mental health by combining cross-country variability in the strictness of the policies with cross-individual variability in face-to-face contacts prior to the pandemic. We find that lockdown policies worsened insomnia, anxiety, and depression by 5, 7.2 and 5.1 percentage points, respectively. This effect was stronger for women and those aged between 50 and 65. Interestingly, lockdown policies notably damaged the mental health of healthy populations. We close with a discussion of lockdown policies targeted at individuals above 65 and/or with pre-existing conditions.18 p.application/pdfeng© 2022 The Authors. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND licenseCausalityConfinementContainment indexCOVID-19LockdownMental healthMobility restrictionsSenior and older Europeansinfo:eu-repo/semantics/article2022-07-15info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess