|
Abstract:
|
Anxiety has been a serious issue well before the COVID-19 pandemic began. During the start of the pandemic, many companies laid off employees due to the sudden drop in business when lockdowns took effect. Changes in everyday life and the loss of jobs and income has led many researchers to suspect COVID-19 has had a serious impact on mental health. Our goals are to identify what factors are correlated with COVID-anxiety-rates and compare the predictive ability of these factors when collected before versus after the start of the pandemic. The data we used are from 2019 American Community Survey (ACS) and the Phase 1 of 2020 Household Plus Survey (HPS). From these surveys, the factors we selected were unemployment rate and health insurance rate. We fitted both parametric and nonparametric models and compared the models produced. Even as the vaccination process continues, we will be dealing with the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic for some time. Thus, it is important we understand how these factors affect our mental health so that we may better understand the problems we face as we move forward.
|
