The impact of stay-at-home policies on individual welfare*

Abstract

In this paper, we perform a choice experiment assessing the impact of stay-at-home policies on individual welfare. We estimate the willingness to accept compensation (WTA) for restricting non-working hours in Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic. The WTA for a one-month stay-at-home policy is about US$480 per person, or 9.1 percent of Sweden's monthly per capita GDP. Stricter lockdowns require disproportionately higher compensation than more lenient ones, indicating that strict policies are cost-effective only if they are much more successful in slowing the spread of the disease. Moreover, older people have a higher WTA of staying home than the rest of the population.