Understanding Family Financial and Emotional Well-being During the Pandemic
Authors
Elizabeth Villegas, Lauren Kissela, and Yiyu Chen are researchers at Child Trends. Gabriel Piña is a researcher with MEF Associates. Kathryn Leifheit is a researcher with the University of California, LA. Eliana M. Perrin is a researcher with Johns Hopkins University.
The COVID-19 pandemic was stressful for most people, a response exacerbated by pandemic-era family interactions and changes in the home. In the first months of the pandemic, families experienced emergency shutdowns and stay-at-home orders, record unemployment, housing instability, and an economic recession. Then, late 2020 and early 2021 marked a new phase of the pandemic, with the introduction of pandemic-related economic relief programs, the development of COVID-19 vaccines, a return to school, economic recovery, and a recovering workforce—but also increasing inflation rates. Across both phases of the pandemic, many parents also faced job losses, reduced work hours, or changes to child care that further strained their finances and opportunities for work and increased social isolation, leading to heightened levels of stress and anxiety.
In this study, we focus on the pandemic-related experiences of non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic families with young children (birth to age 5) and low incomes. Families with low incomes were overrepresented among the unemployed populations in most U.S. metropolitan areas, with upwards of 19 percent unemployment during the peak of the pandemic. Additionally, a higher percentage of non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic workers with low incomes were displaced for work compared to their mid- to higher-earning counterparts. Apart from employment and financial stressors, these families had a heightened sense of anxiety, with more concerns about illness and death, and were more likely to experience abuse, domestic violence, and divorce during the pandemic. The pandemic also caused several changes to many households’ routines due to stay-at-home orders and school and child care closures. These disruptions led to home schooling and working parents without child care reporting a greater reduction in mental health. Collectively, these changes created a unique family experience, with many challenges remaining well beyond the height of the pandemic.
Financial stressors are strongly tied to mental health and well-being outcomes, negatively impacting child development. In contrast, financial support can faciliate resilience. Throughout the pandemic, a number of relief programs were designed to mitigate the impacts of the economic recession and positively impact child and family outcomes. Many families were eligible to recieve direct economic relief or “stimulus” payments, extended unemployment insurance, expanded child tax credits, and emergency rental assistance from the federal government. In addition, many local community agencies and programs provided various forms of relief and connections to services.
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Recent research has begun to study the factors that drive successful implementation of these governmental and community economic relief programs and their impact on family outcomes. However, there has been limited research on understanding the perceptions of families participating in these programs, particularly non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic families with children. Given that economic hardships are strongly tied to mental health and well-being, with implications for child development, this study aimed to understand the experiences of families with young children during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 – 2023), both before and after the distribution of pandemic relief funds.
In this brief, we first offer a high-level overview of the study’s key findings. We then describe our methodology and data sources in more depth before presenting our full findings. Next, we discuss both our findings and our research-based recommendations for policymakers and programs that serve families with low incomes. We conclude with a review of the limitations of the current study.
Key Findings
Our study’s key findings describe the experiences of families who participated in our focus groups (see Methodology and Data section) who had low incomes during the pandemic, and how pandemic relief influenced their mental health and well-being.
- The pandemic exacerbated families’ hardships related to finances, health, and emotional well-being. However, families discussed their strategies for navigating these challenges: Many made strategic decisions around spending, paid minimum balances on utilities, or piecemealed work opportunities and resources to make ends meet.
- A subset of recent immigrant families faced additional burdens of acclimating to a new country while navigating the pandemic and available resources. These respondents described feelings of embarrassment and shame when asking for support and did not always know where to go for financial support.
- Families emphasized the importance of receiving support through trusted community and federal programs, which provided stress and financial relief.
- Although the pandemic exacerbated financial stressors and impacted family relationships, parents used several coping strategies. For example, many families increased communication with their children to foster greater understanding of the pandemic, financial hardships, and emotional well-being needs. Many also sought external support to mitigate their stress, such as counseling, support groups, mindfulness practices, and community and federal financial support.
- Despite ongoing financial barriers, many families expressed a desire for self-sufficiency, which requires sustained, all-encompassing services—especially because getting ahead requires more than financial aid.
Suggested citation
Villegas, E., Kissela, L., Piña, G., Leifheit, K., Chen, Y., & Perrin, E.M. (2024). Understanding family financial and emotional well-being during the pandemic. Child Trends. DOI: 10.56417/928a5462y
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