Anxiety, Reactions, and Economic Expectations of University Students in the Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Survey Evidence from Turkey

Introduction

Covid-19 was first identified in China in the last months of 2019. Since then, it spread all over the world and caused several health problems, deaths, and several other problems. As Covid-19 spreads around the world, it is important to understand its impacts on young adults. However, the impacts worsened in many areas as the pandemic became a global threat.

Beyond the risk of getting sick or dying, the pandemic has consequences in many aspects, especially in psychological, social, and economic issues. Previous studies in the literature (Leduc & Liu, 2016), Born et al (2019)Beaudry & Portier (2006) have shown that new shocks will cause great fluctuations in economy. Unlike other crises, Covid-19 pandemic posed a sudden shock and spread rapidly. The fluctuations in economy caused shocking effects on individuals. Covid-19 pandemic is unprecedented and more global and more impactful compared to other crises such as 2008 economic crisis or flu pandemics. Therefore, the decision-makers, individuals, nor the governments have ever experienced such a health crisis. Several aspects of human concerns, belief, expectations, and reactions are updated in the unprecedented environment of Covid-19 pandemic. To understand the shock effects of pandemic on individuals is an important issue. This pandemic is unprecedented; however, new epidemics are expected from now on. Further, the pandemic is reaching new peak levels day by day and thus, the individuals are continuously exposed to further rising threats. In this study, we tried to collect data providing promising information to assess the mental health of the students, their concerns, reactions, and the macroeconomic expectations.

Determining the psychological anxiety levels, reactions, and macro expectations of the students during a health crisis might help in learning lessons from the pandemic and in avoiding losses. Covid-19 pandemic is an urgent problem. Therefore, this study wants to shed light to the mental health, concerns, reactions, and macroeconomic expectations of students during Covid-19 pandemic. This paper first investigates the mental health status of university students during the pandemic and describes the concerns of the students about their household finances, economy and about their future, as well as the effects of their concerns on their own mental health. The paper also tries to quantify the reactions and the macroeconomic expectations of the students, which are very important for the policymakers. The changes in their academic success and in their spending are evaluated to analyze the reactions of the students during Covid-19. Further, the expectations of the students on gross domestic product growth (GDP growth) and inflation are questioned in order to explore their expectations about macroeconomic issues. Lastly, this paper demonstrates how the students’ characteristics and mental health affect their reactions and macroeconomic expectations.