Have the Covid-19 Lockdowns Made Lasting Changes to Everyday Life? Evidence from UK Time Use Surveys

This paper asks whether the turbulence of the Covid-19 lockdowns has left enduring changes to everyday life in the UK which are unlikely to have happened, up to now, in the absence of the pandemic. The analysis disaggregates the UK population by gender, and into age groups and income bands, specifies whose lives were changed during the lockdowns, and exactly how. It is argued that most changes from pre- to post-lockdowns have been spurts in longer-running trends driven by the UK demographic, housing, economic and political contexts. The exceptions, the sole genuine lockdown legacies that the analysis leaves, are the normalisation of working from home and an increase in total time spent doing paid work.

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