A new analysis of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from 2015 and 2018 collected in 78 countries found that male-female differences in subjective well-being are larger in more gender-equal countries. The researchers report that gender equality might be enhancing boys’ but not girls’ subjective well-being. The study was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Half of all adulthood mental health issues start in adolescence. Recent estimates are that 13.4% of children and adolescents are affected by at least one mental health issue. One major component of mental health is subjective well-being. Subjective well-being is usually defined as a combination of life satisfaction, the presence of positive and absence of negative emotions. It is slowly becoming an important marker of social progress with countries like Bhutan and New Zealand even complementing traditional economic measures of development with measures of individual subjective well-being.
Results of previous studies of gender differences in subjective well-being are mixed. Some reported a bit higher subjective well-being of men on average, others reported no differences or slightly higher average levels of subjective well-being in women. The sizes of these differences, when they are found, are typically extremely small. However, most of these studies were conducted in developed, industrialized Western countries.
Previous researchers have also considered gender equality in a society to be a factor affecting differences in well-being between genders, but data on this issue is lacking. Aiming to fill that gap, Jiesi Guo and his colleagues analyzed data from PISA studies from 2015 and 2018 that assessed academic and life outcomes of 15-year-old students across 78 countries.
This study considered data on the students’ answer to the one life satisfaction question from these databases (“Overall, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?”). This involved data from 911,165 students. Positive and negative affect data (based on the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, asks students how they normally feel with regard to a number of different positive and negative emotions) were available only in the 2018 database with a total of 563,971 students from 72 countries.
These data were paired with a variety of gender equality measures in these countries available from different sources and economic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP), human development index (HDI) and an economic inequality indicator (Gini index).
Results showed that boys were on average more satisfied with their lives than girls and that they feel negative emotions less frequently. These differences were small to medium in size and they remained such after controlling for socioeconomic background of the student, grades and academic performance.
Looking at countries, students from countries with higher gender equality tended to report higher life satisfaction. Average levels of positive and negative emotions were unrelated to gender equality in the country. Surprisingly, differences in life satisfaction between males and females were also larger in countries with higher gender equality. The same was the case for positive and negative emotions.
Further inspection showed that this increasing difference was due to higher subjective well-being of boys in countries with higher gender equality. The subjective well-being of girls was not affected by the gender equality level of the country.
“The results from this study provide the most conclusive evidence to date of a strong positive association between societal levels of gender equality and gender differences in adolescent subjective well-being,” the researchers wrote. “Specifically, we found larger gender gaps in adolescent subjective well-being favoring boys in countries featuring greater levels of gender equality, compared with countries featuring lower levels of gender equality. Although boys’ subjective well-being was higher in countries with greater levels of gender equality, girls’ subjective well-being was not affected by country-level gender equality.”
The study provides a very important insight into relationships between gender and subjective well-being around the world. It should however be taken into account that the study design does not allow any cause-and-effect conclusions and the sample only included students who were enrolled in secondary schools at age 15.
The study, “The Equality Paradox: Gender Equality Intensifies Male Advantages in Adolescent Subjective Well-Being”, was authored by Jiesi Guo, Geetanjali Basarkod, Francisco Perales, Philip D. Parker, Herbert W. Marsh, James Donald, Theresa Dicke, Baljinder K. Sahdra, Joseph Ciarrochi, Xiang Hu, Chris Lonsdale, Taren Sanders, and Borja del Pozo Cruz.