The COVID-19 Pandemic and Sustainable Life of Korean Adolescents: Exploring Gender Differences

Seunghee Yu and Chung Choe
Additional contact information
Seunghee Yu: Department of Social Welfare, Sungkyul University, Anyang 14097, Korea
Chung Choe: Department of Economics, Konkuk University, Seoul 05029, Korea

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 16, 1-14

Abstract: To ensure that adolescents continue to lead healthy, well-adjusted lives—“sustainable lives”—after the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to examine the latter’s impact on various aspects of their lives compared to the socio-cultural context before the outbreak. This study used national representative data on Korean adolescents to analyze the impact of the pandemic on adolescent life from various perspectives, with a focus on gender differences. Our findings confirm that during the pandemic physical activity and sitting time for study purposes decreased, while sleeping and sitting for purposes other than studying increased, with more pronounced changes among girls. Drinking and smoking decreased and boys experienced greater decreases. The findings also indicated that the pandemic generated positive outcomes for mental health: stress, sadness/despair, and suicidal ideation decreased, which was counterintuitive to our general expectations, with a greater impact seen among girls.

Keywords: COVID-19; pandemic; adolescents; sustainable life; gender differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/16/8821/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/16/8821/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:16:p:8821-:d:609971

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().