Rachel Donnelly

Emerging research documents concerning mental health outcomes among essential workers at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, mental health outcomes may have varied across states in the United States, as state-level policies differed. Questions also remain about the mental health of workers during the second year of the pandemic. Using nationally representative data from the U.S. Household Pulse Survey (April–July 2021), we documented the mental health of essential workers and tested whether state-level policies (e.g., mask mandates) reduced mental health disparities for essential workers. Results show that food and beverage essential workers experienced heightened anxiety and depression relative to nonessential workers. Moreover, for food and beverage workers, disparities in mental health were smaller in states with mask mandates, expanded paid leave, and higher minimum wage compared to states without these policies. The present study points to the potential for state-level policies to protect the mental health of essential workers.

The present study documents differences in exposure to family member deaths among foreign-born and U.S.-born Hispanic individuals compared with non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White individuals. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS; 1992–2016, ages 51+; N = 23,228) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health; Waves I–V, ages 12–43; N = 11,088) to estimate the risk of exposure to the death of a mother, father, spouse, sibling, and child across the life course. HRS results show more inequities in exposure to family deaths compared with Add Health results, suggesting differences by age or birth cohort. Compared with non-Hispanic Whites, U.S.-born Hispanic individuals in the HRS have a higher risk of experiencing a child's death throughout adulthood and a sibling's death in later life; the latter is explained by larger sibship size, indicating a greater lifetime risk of bereavement experiences. The higher risk of parental death during childhood for U.S.-born and foreign-born Hispanic individuals is explained by covariates (e.g., lower levels of educational attainment). Hispanic individuals generally have a lower risk of family deaths than non-Hispanic Black individuals, but at times a higher risk of exposure relative to non-Hispanic White individuals.

While precarious employment is not a new concept, it has been brought to the center of scholarly and public discourse worldwide by the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. This essay delineates how precarious employment shapes well-being and situates that relationship in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The essay also provides an overview of how the nine articles boldly investigate how these two layers of global risk—precarious employment and the pandemic—interact to shape individuals’ well-being. In addition to advancing theoretical and empirical knowledge by analyzing timely data from diverse sources and populations, these articles call for more efforts on worker protection reforms and government financial support.