Two Pandemic Years Greatly Reduced Young People's Life Satisfaction: Evidence from a Comparison with Pre-COVID-19 Panel Data

Martin Neugebauer (), Alexander Patzina, Hans Dietrich () and Malte Sandner
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Martin Neugebauer: University of Mannheim
Alexander Patzina: Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg
Hans Dietrich: Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg

No 16636, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: How much did young people suffer from the COVID-19 pandemic? A growing number of studies address this question, but they often lack a comparison group that was unaffected by the pandemic, and the observation window is usually short. Here, we compared the 2-year development of life satisfaction of German high school students during COVID-19 (N = 2,698) with the development in prepandemic cohorts (N = 4,834) with a difference-in-differences design. We found a decline in life satisfaction in winter 2020/2021 (Cohen's d = -0.40) that was approximately three times stronger than that in the general population and persisted until winter 2021/2022. Young people found some restrictions particularly burdensome, especially travel restrictions, bans on cultural events, and the closure of bars/clubs.

Keywords: adolescents; pandemic; causal analysis; well-being; COVID-19; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I31 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2023-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap and nep-hea
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Published - published in: European Sociological Review , 2024, 40 (5), 872 - 886

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