Doctoral Students’ Life Satisfaction Throughout the Covid-19 Pandemic: Inequalities by Parenthood and Gender

Mareike Rußmann (), Nicolai Netz and Ulrike Schwabe
Additional contact information
Mareike Rußmann: German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW)
Nicolai Netz: German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW)
Ulrike Schwabe: German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW)

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2025, vol. 180, issue 2, No 4, 643-673

Abstract: Abstract While large and highly societally relevant, the group of doctoral students still plays a subordinate role in the well-being literature. To narrow this research gap, we investigate how their life satisfaction (LS) trajectories developed throughout the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany. We draw on set-point, adaptation, family, and gender theories to examine doctoral students’ LS trajectories before, at the onset of, during, and after the pandemic. Thereby, we consider not only shorter-term but also longer-term consequences of the pandemic. Analysing data from the German National Academics Panel Study (Nacaps) through fixed-effects (FE) panel regression models, we find that doctoral students’ LS decreased – first moderately, then substantially – in the two years after the onset of the pandemic. Thereafter, however, their LS re-approached pre-pandemic levels again. Importantly, parenthood and gender substantially moderated doctoral students’ LS trajectories. Among doctoral students with children, the decline in LS at the onset of and during the Covid-19 pandemic was stronger than among childless doctoral students – especially for mothers. While childless doctoral students re-attained their pre-pandemic levels of LS after the pandemic, doctoral students with children remained below their pre-pandemic level. These results suggest that individuals strongly reacting to a critical life event might not or only slowly return to their baseline level of LS. On a broader note, our results illustrate the need to apply a long-term social inequalities perspective to fundamentally understand how well-being trajectories unfold during crises scenarios.

Keywords: Well-being; Life satisfaction; Covid-19 pandemic; Gender; Parenthood; Fixed-effects panel regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-025-03648-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:soinre:v:180:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s11205-025-03648-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-025-03648-0

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().