Gender Differences in Life Satisfaction Among Children and Adolescents: A Meta-analysis

Xinjie Chen, Zhihui Cai (), Jinbo He and Xitao Fan
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Xinjie Chen: Stanford University
Zhihui Cai: Central China Normal University
Jinbo He: Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen)
Xitao Fan: Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen)

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2020, vol. 21, issue 6, No 18, 2279-2307

Abstract: Abstract Gender differences in life satisfaction (LS) have been studied for a long time, and the first meta-analysis on this issue was conducted almost 40 years ago. Since then, the social status of females has changed considerably across different nations and cultures. The individual studies in this area continued to show inconsistent results concerning gender group differences in their respective perception of LS. In this study, 46 empirical studies from 1980 to 2017 (with a cumulated total N = 11,772) were meta-analyzed to examine potential gender differences in LS among children and adolescents, and to explore if some study features could be moderators that could account for the observed inconsistencies in the findings across studies. The findings revealed that LS remains invariant across gender groups, but with a slight difference in favor of male children and adolescents. Our results further suggested that four study features were shown to contribute to the variations of the reported gender difference in LS across individual studies: geographical region, population type, age, and domain specific LS measurements. Such different features across the individual studies could have led to the observed inconsistency of the findings. Understanding how gender differences in LS vary by these study features could allow us to consider more targeted support to increase LS of children and adolescents in different situations.

Keywords: Life satisfaction; Cognitive well-being; Children and adolescents; Gender difference; Meta-analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10902-019-00169-9

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