Today, we would like to continue our deconstructed analysis regarding our study called "Pandemic's impact on people's lives". If you would like to discover the study as it is, make sure to follow this link.
If the last time we focused on how the pandemic has impacted the work-school life balance in certain ways, this time we'd want to focus on the travel restrictions that have made life more difficult for all of us, as well as the financial challenges that have arisen along the way.
International travel in the past 3 months
Not many people were able to travel abroad during July - September. And most of the ones who managed to do it, had to make an additional effort to be able to visit another country.
International travel plans & the attitude towards the EU Digital Covid Certificate
Citizen from the Eastern Europe have a higher knowledge of the EU Digital Covid Certificate's importance. Greeks were likely motivated by their interest to travel, as both providers and users, despite pretty high vaccination rate. On the other hand, while Romanians are also interested in travelling, they do it mostly as users, and the low vaccination rate forces them to pay attention to documents required to be accepted in other countries.
The EU Digital COVID Certificate is clearly a polarizing subject, even for Greeks. They could very well rate it highest in terms of usefulness because it would help them open up again their tourism-dependent economy and not because they are particularly fond of it.
The financial situation during the pandemic
The period since the pandemic started was really complicated for Czechs and Greeks in terms of spending control, but it was clearly taking a turn for the worse for many Hungarians, Romanians and Poles.
The present savings situation points a clear picture for many citizens in all 5 countries. Many Czechs and Greeks look like they were forced to keep their spending under control. More than half are currently unable to put something aside for stormy days, and many Greeks were already in this situation even before the pandemic, likely due to years of economic hardships caused by the prolonged debt crisis. The situation looks better, but just in other 3 countries. Only in the Czech Republic there is a significant number of people managing to increase the saving pace.
Another COVID impact on people's finances is people's ability to pay their bank loan installments due to pandemic pressures. Czechs and Poles are managing a bit better than others with reimbursing the loans.
Romanians have been affected the most. There is a high proportion of bank loaning citizens, half of which are struggling to reimburse the loans.
When looking at the financial situation's evolution, we can see that the current situation is not looking good and it's obviously adding even more pressure on the shoulders of already battered people. So far, the Czechs have been the most able to control this uncertain situation, while Hungarians are the most optimistic about the near future prospects.
There's a bit of hope for the near future, but not too much. The days from the pandemic's beggining, when it seemed it like it would only take a couple of months, maybe a year, for things to return to normal, are long gone.
Comentarios