Changes in Subjective Mortality Due to COVID-19 and Its Vaccination: The Influence on Saving Behavior in Japan

When people decide how much of their paycheck to set aside for the future, they are not just doing math; they are making a guess about how much time they have left to live. This idea, known as the life cycle hypothesis, suggests that humans naturally plan their spending and saving based on how long they expect to be around. If you believe you have many years ahead, you might save more to enjoy a long retirement. If you feel your time is running out, the logic follows that you might spend more now, because the future feels less certain. This psychological link between the fear of death and the act of saving is usually a quiet, background force in our economy. However, the global pandemic of the early 2020s turned this background noise into a deafening roar, forcing millions of people to confront their own mortality in a way they never had before.

Researchers in Japan wanted to understand exactly how this sudden, intense fear changed the way people handled their money. They were particularly interested in a specific psychological shift: did the fear of dying from the virus make people spend more and save less? And conversely, did the arrival of vaccines, which promised to lower that risk, make people feel safe enough to start saving again? To find the answer, a team of economists and psychologists conducted a massive survey of 3,500 working adults in Japan. They asked these individuals not just about their bank accounts, but about their deepest fears and hopes regarding their own survival during the pandemic. The goal was to see if the invisible weight of anxiety could be measured in the very concrete numbers of household savings.

The study, published by researchers from Kobe University and Yamato University, focused on a unique moment in time: January 2022. By this point, the virus had swept through society, causing widespread anxiety, but vaccines had also been rolled out to the vast majority of the population. The researchers asked participants a simple but profound question: Did the pandemic make you feel like you were more likely to die in the near future? They also asked if getting vaccinated made you feel like that risk had gone down. With these answers in hand, they compared the respondents' feelings against their actual saving habits, looking at how much of their income they were putting away in 2021.

The results revealed a powerful and somewhat heartbreaking truth about human behavior. For the people who felt that their risk of dying had increased because of the pandemic, their savings dropped significantly. The data showed that this fear acted like a brake on their ability to plan for the future. When people felt their time was short, they were less willing to hold onto money for a tomorrow they doubted they would see. This effect was not just a small blip; for the group of people aged 65 and older, the impact was particularly strong. Those in this older group who felt their mortality had risen saved much less than those who did not feel that same fear. It suggests that for older adults, who are already closer to the end of their natural life span, the added psychological pressure of the virus made the idea of saving for a distant future feel pointless.

However, the story did not end with fear. The researchers also looked at the effect of the vaccines. They found that for people who felt their risk of dying had decreased after getting the shot, their savings went up. The relief of feeling safer translated directly into a greater willingness to set money aside. This was true for both younger workers and the older generation. Interestingly, simply having received the vaccine was not enough to change behavior; it was the feeling of safety that mattered. A person could have taken the shot but still feel anxious, and in that case, their savings did not increase. It was the subjective sense of relief, the internal belief that the danger had passed, that unlocked the desire to save for the future.

The study also uncovered a surprising difference between what people felt and what actually happened to them. The researchers checked whether people who had actually caught the virus behaved differently. For the younger group, having survived an infection did not significantly change their saving habits. But for the older group, those who had actually been infected and survived showed a different reaction: they saved more. This suggests that while the abstract fear of death made older people spend less, the concrete experience of surviving a life-threatening illness made them more cautious and determined to build a financial buffer for the future. It was as if the younger group reacted to the idea of death, while the older group reacted to the reality of having faced it and lived.

The researchers were careful to rule out other explanations, such as whether people simply had less money to save because they lost jobs or because they were older. They controlled for income, education, family size, and even how patient a person was generally. Even after accounting for all these factors, the link between the feeling of mortality and the act of saving remained clear. The study used advanced statistical methods to ensure that the fear of death was causing the change in savings, and not the other way around. The evidence pointed to a direct line of influence: when the mind perceives a shorter horizon, the wallet closes for the long term; when the mind perceives safety, the wallet opens.

This research offers a clear window into how a global crisis reshapes the private financial decisions of ordinary people. It shows that saving is not just a cold calculation of income and expenses, but a deeply emotional act tied to our sense of security and time. The pandemic did not just change the economy through lockdowns and supply chains; it changed the economy by changing how people felt about their own lives. For policymakers, the lesson is that during times of crisis, the public's perception of risk is just as important as the actual risk itself. If people feel unsafe, they stop planning for the future, and the economy slows down. If they feel safe again, they begin to build for tomorrow. The study concludes that understanding these invisible psychological shifts is essential for understanding the real-world behavior of households, proving that the most powerful economic force is often the one we cannot see, but only feel.