Subjective well-being of healthcare workers after Japan’s COVID-19 state of emergency

Abstract

Healthcare workers (HCWs) are the cornerstone of pandemic response, yet their subjective well-being may be compromised by unavoidable occupational risks. While current research has documented the immediate psychological impact of COVID-19, fewer studies have tracked how self-reported happiness among HCWs changes as public health policies shift from emergency measures to their subsequent lifting. This study examines the dynamics of self-reported happiness among HCWs compared to other workers in Japan, focusing on the transition from the COVID-19 state of emergency to the period after the emergency was lifted. We constructed unique individual-level panel data through internet surveys conducted five times between March 13 and June 12, 2020. The analytic worker sample contains 10,901 person-wave observations for the panel models, and 10,689 observations for the OLS, Ordered Logit, FE OLS and Probit analyses. Happiness was self-reported on an 11-point scale ranging from 0 (least happy) to 10 (most happy). To address concerns regarding the ordinal nature of the happiness outcome, we estimated OLS, Ordered Logit, Probit, and Panel Ordered Logit specifications and compared their findings. The key findings are as follows: (1) Overall, the happiness level of HCWs was consistently lower than that of other workers. (2) The largest disparity in happiness levels between HCWs and other workers was observed after the state of emergency was lifted. In the fixed-effects specification, the Wave 5 × Healthcare Worker coefficient indicates that the healthcare worker-other worker gap widened by 0.26 points on the 11-point scale relative to Wave 1. These findings are consistent across linear (OLS, FE OLS), ordinal (Ordered Logit and Panel Ordered Logit), and binary (Probit) specifications. The Probit estimate shows that healthcare workers were 13.8% points less likely than other workers to report being relatively happy (Happiness > = 6) in Wave 5, significant at the 1% level. Our findings indicate that HCWs reported relatively lower happiness after the state of emergency was lifted. From a health care organization perspective, this pattern suggests the potential value of targeted support for frontline workers during transitions out of emergency measures. Because the study measures self-reported happiness rather than clinical mental health, burnout, or turnover, these broader implications should be interpreted cautiously.