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Second, do the surviving spouses of persons who died during the pandemic face greater increases in depressive symptoms compared with adults widowed before the pandemic? Third, to what extent did the strictness of government restrictions moderate the pandemic widowhood penalty for symptoms of depression? We find that depressive symptoms increased dramatically for those widowed during the pandemic compared with widowed adults before the pandemic. In addition, the pandemic widowhood penalty does not apply to all those who lost their partners during the pandemic; it applies only to those who lost their partner when governments were enforcing stay-at-home orders. Our findings support the notion that the COVID-19 pandemic and stringent government restrictions exacerbated risk factors and hindered protective factors that affect older adults\u2019 resilience to spousal death.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1215\/00703370-11790737","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,4]],"date-time":"2025-02-04T13:29:11Z","timestamp":1738675751000},"page":"137-158","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Government Restrictions During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Depressive Symptoms Following Widowhood"],"prefix":"10.1215","volume":"62","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7756-6799","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Zachary","family":"Van Winkle","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Centre for Research on Social InequalitieS (CRIS), Sciences Po, Paris, France; Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8342-9632","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Bartholomew","family":"Konechni","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Centre for Research on Social InequalitieS (CRIS), Sciences Po, Paris, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"73","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,1]]},"reference":[{"key":"2025021915274968200_dem11790737C1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ahmed\n              N.\n            \n          , BarnettP., GreenburghA., PemovskaT., StefanidouT., LyonsN., .\u00a0.\u00a0. 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