Coronavirus Lockdown Mental Equilibrium

"With more moderate assumptions about losses in work time and income, and with all non-sleep time listed as being with one's spouse, the simulations suggest that the happiness of married individuals could have been increased slightly by the lockdown."
"Even under fairly conservative assumptions, their [single people] happiness decreases and with more extreme assumptions the decrease is quite substantial." 
"Time alone remains highly significantly negative [for single people, as opposed to the happiness level of married people]."
Daniel Hamermesh, economist, Barnard College

There have been increasing reports in the news media from all different sources and countries experiencing lockdown during the novel coronavirus pandemic that domestic assaults have increased. That couples living together and experiencing the stresses of being together constantly see women being battered increasingly. The concern is that not only are women facing more physical violence at home with enforced lockdowns, the resources to which they might normally turn for aid are no longer available to them as all businesses and services have also gone into lockdown. Males simmering with resentment at losing employment, look for a scapegoat so they can release their tensions. Women become victims.

Life can be very complicated. Modelling undertaken by economists to try to determine how people are faring under lockdown conditions and social distancing emphasize, however, that it is single people who live alone and now really are alone, who are experiencing mental health adversity. Massive studies of how people use their time determining how happy they are formed the insightful base for the simulation.

The average person,, goes the assumption through the modelling insights, in spending time with their spouse receives a boost in the happiness quotient. Conversely, for every minute spent alone for the average single person, their unhappiness potential grows. This disparity in how people are managing to cope with the worldwide lockdown is emphasized in a working paper released at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United States.

Economist Daniel Hamermesh's simulations clearly support the idea that the average married person is happier in lockdown, as opposed to the average single person who comes out of the experience miserable. Another, predicable boost in life satisfaction is supported by higher incomes. The more people work the more satisfied they appear to be with their lives. Those suffering a job loss, irrespective of marital status experience a low in life satisfaction.

Single people tend to spend more time with friends and relatives  under normal circumstances, to boost their happiness level, since we are after all, social creatures. Stay-at-home and social distancing regulations have put a crimp in that formula, making socializing of that kind difficult-to-impossible for a huge number of people.