Conference Paper
Economic Burdens, Social Protection and Well-being during the COVID-19 Crisis in the MENA Region: Insights from Fuzzy Set-Theoretic Approach
No.
ERF30_124
Publisher
ERF
Date
March, 2024
This paper aims to investigate the pathways and the possible combinations between social protection and economic hardships, contributing to explain individuals' psychological wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the MENA region. For this purpose, we employed the fuzzy set-theoretic approach, enabling a detailed analysis of how causal conditions contribute to an outcome. This approach is particularly suited to causal process analysis due to its configurational understanding of how causes (conditions) combine to produce outcomes. Our empirical findings confirm the presence of several paths (configurations) leading to either good or bad psychological well-being scores during the Covid-19 crisis. We observed that the absence of economic burdens is a necessary but not sufficient condition for achieving good well-being scores, as it is present in all combinations linked with the outcome but cannot produce this outcome alone. However, the results indicate that the absence of social protection combined with an age below 35 years is a sufficient but not necessary combination for producing bad well-being scores. There is clear evidence that governments and policymakers have implemented policies primarily focusing on physical well-being, with a relatively weaker emphasis on psychological well-being.
Research Associates
Khaled Nasri
Researcher, Faculty of Economic Sciences and Management...
Authors
Mohamed Anis Ben Abdallah
Consultant, Commissariat Audit Organization (CAO)