Mental health between present issues and future expectations

Based on a 2020 survey of more than 4000 working-age women, we investigate the main determinants of mental distress during the COVID-19 first wave in Italy. We address the role of two groups of drivers: present issues (e.g., present working status) and expectations about the future (e.g., fear of losing the job). Our results show that expectations do play a crucial role on mental distress. Younger women and those lacking a high school degree are in most distress. even controlling for individual fixed effects, and contextual factors which account for potential dynamics in the labor market. We investigate how expectations interact with several individual dimension, as age, level of education, sector of employment, and individual gender norms. Expectations of future employment is still among the main driver, but respondents with higher stereotype show higher distress due to uncertainty about the future employment of the partner, suggesting that the prevalence of a traditional breadwinner model is a source of additional distress on this population.