Stress among Latino Adults in California during COVID-19

Stress among Latino Adults in California during COVID-19

Luisa Blanco, Vanessa Cruz, Deja Frederick and Susie Herrera

Working paper

Pepperdine School Of Policy

2021

We study the impact of COVID-19 on stress, and especially financial stress, among Latino adults in California. We take a mixed-methods approach and rely on quantitative and qualitative data for our analysis. We recruited 84 Low and Moderate Income (LMI) Latino adults in California through the internet panel Understanding America Study (UAS), and among those who participated in the Mobile Financial Diaries (MFD) project, which took place during 2018-2019. We report findings about personal experiences during COVID-19 in October of 2020 and compared this to data collected during the period of August-October of 2018. Given the characteristics of our participants, our study portrays the experiences of Latinos in California who are United States citizens and working, speak English, and have health insurance and relatively high levels of educational attainment. We find that our quantitative measures of financial wellbeing and stress during COVID-19 do not show significant differences from data collected in 2018. Nonetheless, our qualitative data analysis shows that our participants are experiencing major stressors during the pandemic associated with labor market experiences and family circumstances, and women seemed to have been affected the most.