Determinants of individuals' objective and subjective financial fragility during the COVID-19 pandemic

We examine determinants of the objective and subjective financial fragility of 2100 individuals across Australia, France, Germany, and South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic. Objective financial fragility reflects individuals' (in)ability to deal with unexpected expenses, while subjective financial fragility reflects their emotional response to financial demands. Controlling for an extensive set of socio-demographics, we find that negative personal experiences during the pandemic (i.e., reduced or lost employment; COVID-19 infection) are associated with higher objective and subjective financial fragility. However, individuals' cognitive (i.e., financial literacy) as well as non-cognitive abilities (i.e., internal locus of control; psychological resilience) help to counteract this higher financial fragility. Finally, we examine the role of government financial support (i.e., income support; debt relief) and find that it is negatively related to financial fragility only for the economically weakest households. Our results have implica-tions for public policymakers, providing levers for reducing individuals' objective and subjective financial fragility.& COPY; 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/