Lina Martínez

A dominant prediction of the social identity literature is that strong identification with a group fuels political participation, including support for high-cost collective action. We test this prediction using a large, representative population survey of 2,750 residents of Cali, Colombia, fielded a few months after the 2021 uprising that left dozens of demonstrators dead and the city blockaded for six weeks. Our outcome variable is self-reported support for the uprising (with perceived legitimacy of the strike as a parallel measure). Our identification measure is the trust each respondent reports in a member of one of four ingroups (district, class, religion, politics) and four outgroups (migrants, ex-combatants, riot police, rioters), relative to an average Colombian. Across specifications with district fixed effects and a rich set of socio-demographic controls, strong ingroup identification is negatively correlated with support for the uprising. Universalists, whose trust budget extends to an average Colombian no less than to a member of their own group, are systematically more supportive. Proximity to violent hot-spots in the city does little to displace this pattern. We argue that polarized post-conflict cities in the developing world are a class of contexts in which the dominant hi-identifiers prediction reverses, and we discuss what this means for the positive and welfare economics of revolt and for policy in fractured social contracts.

This article summarizes and updates information on subjective well-being and its role in the public agenda, design, and evaluation of public policies including its definition, measurement, main findings reported in the literature, and its use in the design-evaluation of public policies and introduction into government agendas. A narrative literature review was conducted, its results show that subjective well-being is a tool used to guide public action in developed countries; however, in Latin America, knowledge about it and its role in government is new and fragmented. In some countries, progress has been made by constant measurement through the national statistical agencies, but its incorporation into government performance is scarce.

This paper presents two datasets about college students’ subjective well-being and mental health in a developing country. The first data set of this report offers a diagnosis of the prevalence of self-reported symptoms associated with stress, anxiety, depression, and overall evaluation of subjective well-being. The study uses validated scales to measure self-reported symptoms related to mental health conditions. To measure stress, the study used the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) and the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) to measure symptoms associated with anxiety (GAD-7), and the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) to measure symptoms associated with depression. This diagnosis was collected in a college student sample of 3052 undergrad students in 2022 at a medium-sized university in Colombia. The second dataset reports the evaluation of a positive education intervention implemented in the same university. The Colombian Minister of Science and Technology financed the intervention to promote strategies to mitigate the consequences on college students’ well-being and mental health after the pandemic. The program evaluation data cover two years (2020–2022) with 193 college students in the treatment group (students enrolled in a class teaching evidence-based interventions to promote well-being and mental health awareness) and 135 students in the control group. Data for evaluation include a broad array of variables of life satisfaction, happiness, negative emotions, COVID-19 effects, relationships valuations, and habits and the measurement of three scales: The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), a brief measurement of depressive symptomatology (CESD-7), and the Brief Strengths Scale (BSS).

La pandemia contrajo el crecimiento de la clase media en América Latina. En este análisis se abordan las consecuencias de la pandemia en la clase media durante la crisis de la COVID-19 en las cuatro ciudades principales de Colombia. Se estudiaron dos consecuencias de la pandemia: acceso a servicios financieros y endeudamiento y la percepción de la gestión gubernamental. Se hizo un análisis descriptivo con base en los datos de un sondeo en línea con más de 1600 respuestas recolectadas durante la pandemia entre noviembre del 2020 y enero del 2021. La encuesta fue realizada a adultos residentes de las ciudades de Bogotá, Medellín, Cali y Barranquilla, donde se indagó por las condiciones económicas y sociales. La clase media fue severamente afectada en términos económicos: el 46% de los encuestados reportó una reducción en sus ingresos y en el 33,1% de los casos, algún miembro de la familia perdió el empleo. Más de la mitad de los encuestados tuvo dificultades para pagar sus deudas. Se reporta baja confianza hacia al Gobierno y una baja satisfacción con la gestión gubernamental.

College students face unique challenges that the consequences of COVID-19 might aggravate. To explore the pandemic’s consequences on college students’ well-being, we conducted an online survey with 634 students from a private university in Cali, Colombia. The study sought to assess students’ well-being due to COVID-19, and to explore the mediating effects of optimism, gratitude, and emotional closeness on college students’ well-being. Results showed that COVID-19 affected students’ mental health and well-being. Being optimistic and grateful mediated with life satisfaction and happiness. Optimism, emotional closeness, and gratitude also mediated the negative effect of fear of infection and the pandemic’s impact on students’ academic performance. The results of this analysis will promote discussion of the implementation of coping strategies to help students thrive, promote resilience, and contribute to students’ well-being and better mental health.

The pandemic has affected people’s lives and emotions in profound ways, which governments ignore at their peril. Among the often disregarded consequences of the pandemic, especially in developing countries, are its toll on subjective well-being and its implications for health policymaking. This paper uses a battery of surveys with over 1800 observations collected in 2019 and 2020, which inform on many aspects of subjective well-being before and during the pandemic in Cali, Colombia. The results show a dramatic and widespread reduction in life satisfaction in several dimensions of well-being beyond health, and not just among those directly affected by COVID-19. This analysis focuses on differences in well-being by gender and health status, providing information about gender variances and differences in subjective well-being between those who experienced and those who did not experience physical illness (including the COVID-19 infection) during the pandemic. This analysis aims at contributing to the body of research that studies the consequences of the pandemic for life satisfaction and well-being, in the context of a city experiencing profound social unrest during the pandemic.