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Mit steigendem Wohlstand werden Jugendliche unglücklicher

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Steigt in einem Land der Wohlstand, hat das für Erwachsene einen positiven Effekt. Für Jugendliche ist es genau umgekehrt, wie eine neue Studie herausgefunden hat.

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1 Min.

Das Leben in einem reichen Land hat nicht nur positive Seiten. Je reicher ein Land, desto unglücklicher ist seine Jugend. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt eine neue Studie der deutschen Ökonomen Robert Rudolf und Dirk Bethmann von der Korea University, die den Zusammenhang mit Daten von fast einer halben Million 15-Jähriger aus 72 Ländern festgestellt haben. Erschienen ist die Studie kürzlich im „Journal of Happiness Studies“. Die Daten stammen aus Schülerbefragungen, die 2018 im Rahmen der Pisa-Studie erhoben wurden.

Demnach sinkt die Lebenszufriedenheit von Jugendlichen, wenn das Pro-Kopf-Einkommen zunimmt. Anders als bei Erwachsenen, bei denen auf Länderebene mehr Wohlstand zu einer deutlichen Erhöhung der Lebenszufriedenheit führt, bedeutet der wirtschaftliche Erfolg eines Landes für Jugendliche häufig mehr Stress. Das sei ein Paradox, das wissenschaftlich bislang noch nicht bekannt gewesen sei, sagen die Autoren.

Zwar steige die Bildung – beispielsweise gebe es anteilig mehr Hochschulabschlüsse in einer Bevölkerung –, das Wohlbefinden nehme der Studie zufolge jedoch ab. Die Autoren schreiben, dass „moderne wissensbasierte Ökonomien immer höhere Investitionen in Humankapital in frühen Lebensphasen erfordern“. Die Lernintensität sei höher als in weniger wohlhabenden Ländern, heißt es. In Ländern mit mittlerem Einkommen seien die Bildungsanforderungen „tendenziell gering“, Jugendliche erlebten dort „ein hohes Maß an Wohlbefinden“. Länder mit niedrigem Einkommen tauchen in der Studie nicht auf, da es von ihnen keine Daten gibt.

Mädchen stärker betroffen als Jungs

Deutschland liegt mitten auf der Trendlinie, der Zusammenhang ist hierzulande besonders deutlich. Robert Rudolf sagte gegenüber der F.A.Z., dass Erwachsene in Deutschland eine höhere Lebenszufriedenheit hätten als erwartet. Das gelte jedoch nicht für deutsche Jugendliche. „Interessant sind auch die extrem unglücklichen Jugendlichen in der Türkei und Großbritannien, die sicherlich politische Ausreißer sind im Jahr 2018“, so der Ökonom. Als Begründung nennt Rudolf Erdogans zunehmenden Autoritarismus in der Türkei sowie den Brexit in Großbritannien.

Zwei weitere Ergebnisse fördert die Studie zutage: Dass Mädchen stärker von den hohen Anforderungen im Bildungswettbewerb betroffen seien und „mehr darunter leiden“. Zum anderen argumentieren die zwei Wissenschaftler, dass ein höhere Maß an Kooperation zwischen Mitschülern das Wohlbefinden stärke. Höherer Wettbewerb innerhalb von Schulen habe einen negativen Effekt auf die Zufriedenheit.

Why are adolescents so unhappy?

by  Tyler Cowen  in

- Data Source

- Education

Here is a new tack, or rather a very old one:

Using PISA 2018 data from nearly half a million 15-year-olds across 72 middle- and high-income countries, this study investigates the relationship between economic development and adolescent subjective well-being. Findings indicate a negative log-linear relationship between per-capita GDP and adolescent life satisfaction. The negative nexus stands in stark contrast to the otherwise positive relationship found between GDP per capita and adult life satisfaction for the same countries. Results are robust to various model specifications and both macro and micro approaches. Moreover, our analysis suggests that this apparent paradox can largely be attributed to higher learning intensity in advanced countries. Effects are found to be more pronounced for girls than for boys.

That is from a new paper by Robert Rudolf and Dirk Bethmann.  Is it the learning per se, or is the learning a proxy for a very particular kind of peer interaction?  Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.

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Luka

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Can't Buy Me Love - The Beatles

I think it's the continuing lack of civic engagement. As we continue to socially isolate and devote more time to streaming and the internet we'll achieve less life satisfaction. Arnold Kling has often noted fewer high schoolers are getting driver's licenses or dating. Teen years are a hormonal disaster where for a brief time your entire life is dominated by your awakening sex drive, trying to be cool, college prep, grades, making the team, bullying, and so much more. As its happening high school seems so gigantic. It's a lot to take in just four years. You have no idea that you will eventually calm down and that the majority of life is isn't high school. For me, having friends was without question the most important way I got through my teen years. Church and family also helped. If you don't have friends, a girlfriend/boyfriend, play sports, go to church, or participate in some extracurricular activities your teen years have got to be an absolute Hell.

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Sure

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School is wildly different from typical historical human experience. Very few folks grew up with anywhere near the age-segregation of modern high schoolers. Even a generation ago a much more significant percentage of teens worked. Church, civic participation, or even just buying parts for the car all resulted in socialization outside of the peer group.

And I submit that this was healthy.

But these days? Teens have exceedingly few adult influences. And it is going to get worse. Falling fertility rates means fewer aunts and uncles. Less dating (and particularly less dating between college lowerclassmen and high school upperclassmen) means fewer chances to connect outside your immediate social milieu. And online? My teen patients appear to spend all their time online seeking out folks with cloned opinions and tastes.

And even what diversity exists within high school is now being buried by self-imposed censorship and fear.

If we believed in real returns on diversity the modern teen life that revolves around near-age peers, all from the same social-economic strata (because of where mom and dad could afford to buy a house), with the same interests and opinions would be the first thing to go.

But instead we will move heaven and earth to maintain the inherent age-segregation and at most turn a blind eye towards the conformity enablement of the system.

Teens need people not suffering through teen drama, if only to be a counterpoint to mock. And high school just does not provide that.

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JMK

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Happiness depends heavily on a sense of discoverable, personable place in the social order on which which we find themselves. Yet our wealth grows, in part, from the complexity, inscrutability, and impersonality of the social order. So go figure... Unlike with, say, reeds, the happiness problem grows stiffer as wealth grows taller.

It's a shame that education today focuses so heavily on marketable skills that, if used in isolation, lead so ruthlessly to unhappiness. How much better to include, as part of education, skills of social discovery, as well as attitudes that lend themselves to happiness and comfort in an inscrutable and impersonal world.

Because it doesn't need to be as inscrutable and impersonal as young people think. With a common signaling language--which can be taught--and with a cultural value of authenticity, two ships in the night can more readily multiply into 500 ships in the day.

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Let's not ignore the obvious, shall we

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Hundreds of times per year, American youth are told by Dems that there will be no Earth for them to live on as adults.

And no, this does not come from some obscure Alex Jones-type that you have to track down on the internet. This is every US newspaper, 97% of TV media, POTUS, half of Congress, every celebrity, and most of their teachers. And they've been spouting this for 25 years.

Do you really think this has no effect on youth psyche? You really think is a "harmless call to action?" Just basic Marketing 101?

You are being intentionally blind if so. My kids are sane, but they know many 20-ish people who are seriously damaged by all of this vile partisan political propaganda.

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Kevin Postlewaite

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I doubt that such rhetoric is any more damaging then the threat of nuclear war that I grew up under, I believe that the problems are elsewhere.

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Luka

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I agree that in general I don't think students get a very inspiring or life affirming message from public schools and it goes beyond environmental concerns. Growing up in a deep blue state in a progressive area will certainly bias my perception. There was a lot of emphasis on going to college. From what I remember my school basically said there was either college or nothingness after high school. American history is generally taught from a negative or neutral way and there is little attempt to encourage people to identify with the USA so people don't have much sense of national pride. I graduated right before "gender ideology" took hold which I think has been more confusing than affirming for many.

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Kaleberg

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The Republicans are much more supportive with their insisting that women have no place in civic society except as brood mares, that one's worth to society is proportional to the lightness of one's skin and you are an outcast if your sexual desires do not conform to their preferences.

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Patrick

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> their insisting that women have no place...

You are doing yourself a disfavor by insisting on stereotypes. In my experience, the vast majority of registered Republicans do not hold such a view, and worse for you, they get very p.o'd when others insist that they must.

To get what you want, it is far better for everyone if you build a coalition. That requires you to respectfully disagree on some topics.

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Anon

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I too wish we could all live in a fantasy world of our own making. Maybe soon we'll each have a personalized Matrix we can plug into and finally be happy.

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Trevor G

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> I too wish we could all live in a fantasy world of our own making.

Ah, so I'm not the only one who's noticed this phenomenon??

> Maybe soon we'll each have a personalized Matrix we can plug into and finally be happy.

Interestingly, that is the very architecture that humans/humanity have been running on forever, how this rather important detail about reality has been kept under covers so successfully for so long is rather mysterious.

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So Much For Subtlety

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. Teen years are a hormonal disaster where for a brief time your entire life is dominated by your awakening sex drive,

It is made worse because girls have gone from a first date where a boy might give them a flower to one where he expects an@l sex. The porn revolution has been transformative.

You do not need to look far for reasons why girls are unhappy.

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Lord Action

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This is hard to square with the fact that straight kids are having less sex and dating much less.

FWIW, I suspect the pro-gay #metoo environment is hurting the development of normal relationships. Yeah, yeah, nobody should be clubbed over the head and dragged off to the cave, but young men are deathly afraid of doing anything that could be misinterpreted or misrepresented by a young woman.

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y81

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The teenagers of my daughter's peer group (she was born in 1994, so I am a few years out of date) did not have an@l sex on the first date. They actually didn't date much, in the sense of a movie or dinner or a concert as a couple. They hung out in groups. In those groups, there was a good bit of what they called "hooking up," which meant to them only what my generation called "making out" or "second base." "Hooking up" meant something more in 1995, maybe, but not by 2010.

Now I am talking here about a group of upper middle to upper class children, but most surveys show that today's teenagers across the board have less sexual activity than teenagers of 40 years ago, so in that respect my daughter and her friends are typical.

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So Much For Subtlety

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I am pretty sure that hooking up does not mean what you think it means. But don't let me ruin your illusion. I think it is good when fathers think their daughters are only making out.

You come to the same problem from the other end but we are actually in agreement. Why are young people having less sex? Because sex has become creepy and weird, especially for young girls. Making out might be appealing. But what you can find freely on the internet less so.

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JonFraz

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I was a teen in the 80s. Definitely lots of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll in teen life back then. From what I understand there's less of that now (at least the sex and drugs stuff).

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Jack

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Could be a father or a mother, but they bare indeed #s 1 & 2 on the list of "least likely to know"

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Kaleberg

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Teenagers aren't having sex very often these days, let alone anal sex on the first date. Maybe girls are unhappy because someone who loathes them like Donald Trump was elected president.

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Justin

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Low-quality, grievance-based comment. But in all seriousness, I do think the authors' full regression models did a reasonable job of approximating "meritocracy implementation" with PISA scores and student competition. While the authors state effects were more pronounced for girls, it was still significant for boys.

Regardless of where you fall on smartphones, social media, etc., it's hard to deny, at this point, that the academic arms race we now force children into (starting in grade school) plays some role in declining adolescent/young-adult mental health and well-being. There are clearly positives to society being more closely aligned to the ideals of meritocracy, but I think we are only beginning to reckon with the obvious downsides of this model. Public intellectuals like TC should think more seriously about this topic.

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Justin

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"low quality comment was in response to 'Damn, that is damning'"

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Kaleberg

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Having a two tier society doesn't help. You either make it into the top 10%, something that is increasingly difficult for those not born in that decile, or accept that you will just barely get by for the rest of your life and that it will get harder and harder to eke out a living. Worse, even if you win a slot in that 10%, you'll be under increasing pressure to stay there and that 10% is likely to shrink further intensifying the competition. The big middle class, a product of the New Deal, was abolished in the 1980s, and the kids may not know much about the New Deal, but they know when they're screwed.

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Henry22

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@kaleburg - um, sorry, no the 'big middle class' was NOT a product of the New Deal™ (the middle class was no bigger in 1941 after eight years of New Deal policies). The 'big middle class' was a result of the US of A being the only industrialized country that was not laid waste coming out of WWII. Therefore, our output and industrial might allowed for a halcyon period of 30 years (until 1973) where upon that generation of workers were gifted with virtually controlling the entire output of the globe making it possible for the class economic gains that were seen.

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Jonfraz

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It is not true that the US was "the only industrialized country that was not laid waste coming out of WWII."

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Hazel Meade

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I think it has to do with the delayed adulthood that all advanced industrialized countries have, in order to educate people to a higher level. Teenagers in less advanced countries become functional "adults" at a younger age, and are allowed to make their own life decisions, including having sex, getting married, having a job that earns them income, which gives them more freedom. Unfortunately, humans are biologically ready to be adults well before they can be educated at the level needed to contribute optimally to a technically advanced economy. So we have a lot of teenagers who hormonally want to be adults and be treated like adults, but we force them to stay in school for 5-10 more years before they are actually allowed to have the freedoms that adults have.

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So Much For Subtlety

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Oh come on. About 10 to 20% of university students need to be there. The rest could be, and should be, getting on with their lives. As you say.

The vast expansion of higher education has nothing to do with what the economy needs. The economy does not need an enormous number of psychology students for instance. That is just an expensive way for a girl to meet a nice boy with an Engineering degree. It does not need most of the social sciences actually. I am not even sure about an undergraduate business degree.

We should restrict higher education to those that need it to contribute to the economy - Engineers, Hard sciences. You could even make a case that lawyers and doctors ought to be taught by apprenticeship.

We are making children miserable because we are not brave enough to say no

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JWatts

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The US collegiate system and it's results seemed pretty positive when about 25% of high school graduates attended. The 50%+ attending now seem to be overcrowding the market and driving down the cost effectiveness of the degree. Which wouldn't matter as much if the costs weren't subsidized to a large degree.

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Hazel Meade

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Not going to disagree with most of what you say. We're delaying adulthood for the purpose of extended education, and then failing to direct people towards the areas where we have the most need of a more educated population.

I'm totally in favor of technical and trade schools for people who can't quite handle an engineering degree too.

That said, even a technical or trade school is going to require *some* additional education beyond what you would get in a pre-industrial agrarian village. So I expect that the delayed adulthood is going to remain a feature of industrial economies and not too many people are going to be getting pregnant at 15.

There may be some other fringe benefits of keeping young teens from immediately knocking up their girlfriends and having kids, like giving them the opportunity to think about what kind of life they want before they do that.

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CU Farley

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>I am not even sure about an undergraduate business degree.

As long as one of the purposes of college is as a finishing school for upper middle and upper class children, the BA in Business will always exist. That way as long as they have the money everyone can "finish" college. Serious employers and college admins know that the MBA program is the (probably under but close to) equivalent of a stem BS in academic rigor. The BA is for football players and failscions.

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JonFraz

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OK, but that's been true for pretty much a lifetime now. You didn't get married, quit school and go to work at an adult job when I was 16 forty years ago either. The piece here is about a fairly recent decline in teenage happiness.

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Rick From Baltimore

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There's a decent argument that middle and high schoolers bear the brunt of the anxiety people of most classes feel over the prospect of downward mobility. I would be more likely to believe this if I had evidence of greater adolescent unhappiness among the middle to upper classes whose parents are pushing the meritocratic rat race in education. Pretty sure I'm becoming one of them (got annoyed at my kid for bringing home a B in math).

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Colin C

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I think that relates to the declining rate of economic growth and thus living standards growth we've seen over the past few decades. From Brad DeLong's Slouching Toward Utopia, living standards rapidly rose from about 1880 to 2010, and each generation reasonably expected to be better off than their parents, even if they had relative downward mobility. But kids these days no longer expect to have a higher standard of living than their parents, which leads to some pretty deep anxieties for both kids and parents.

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Hazel Meade

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The constant drumbeat of doom-mongering about living standards doesn't help. What evidence do we have the next generation is *really* going to be worse off in objective measures or is that just a convenient politically motivated narrative that some people like to pound on to advance some political agenda or other?

Let's throw environmental doom-mongering in the mix as well. I am concerned about various environmental issues, but is telling our kids that they're going to inhabit a toxic post-apocalyptic waste land really an ethnical necessity ?

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Sure

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Suicide rate is up and rising for the cohorts just ahead of them, suicides thus far in life for their cohort are also elevated.

Marriage rate is down for the cohort ahead of them, most behaviors correlated with marriage in early adulthood are also down for current teens (e.g. dating, driver's licenses, religious participation).

Fertility gaps between desires and attainment are up for the cohorts ahead of them and are rising fastest for the youngest cohorts as they pass the milestones surveys measure (e.g. 25).

Quantity of reported sex is down. Quality of reported sex is flat-lined at best (non-practice making imperfect if nothing else).

Substance use disorder is increasing for the cohorts ahead of them as are overdose deaths. Anxiety and depression axis diagnoses are at record highs for their age group and the age groups ahead of them. Rates of eating disorders are up and recently increasing.

Other things that correlate with reported happiness and satisfaction, like religion, civic participation, or friend counts are also falling for this cohort and those immediately above them.

All of this is correlational and observational, but I would submit that it gains a teen nothing to gain a better iPhone but to sacrifice his friends. We have more stuff, we are more politically engaged, and we can more easily compare our lives to those with better lives ... none of this correlates with a better life.

End of the day, barring drastic changes to trendline kids today will see more of their peers commit suicide, more of their peers struggling with mental illness (and in ways that suggest things other than changing diagnostic thresholds), and more of their peers lost to addiction. I would submit that these trends will have a real effect on happiness.

We could, of course, just throw out all the data we get from surveys or add enough other epicycles to make things fit ... but literally dozens of positive correlates of happiness are in decline while dozens of anti-correlates are increasing. Whatever your theory to prognosticate Panglossian futures in some fashion has a huge amount of stuff to take in.

I am wildly skeptical that even the worst case projections for environmental doom-mongering will kill more people than opioids or suicide. But I am wildly more confident that suicide and substance use disorder death rates will increase throughout young-adulthood for present teens.

I need not go reaching for theories, I can just note that the best predictors of happiness are in retreat and the body count of unhappiness is rising. That ain't a recipe for sunshine and rainbows.

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Etalon d'Silomar

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Calculate how many hours the median worker must put in to pay off their home. Compare to 40 years ago. That's not doom-mongering.

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Kaleberg

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There are no guarantees, but 40 years of stagnant or falling living standards for most people doesn't encourage optimism.

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Zote

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I would love to see adolescent happiness by school size. I think the progressive movements towards consolidation and large schools has created an extremely socially competitive environment for students.

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Colin C

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Is high school consolidation really a partisan issue? For a while splitting big schools into smaller "academies" was all the rage, and most of the very large high schools I'm familiar with are in the suburbs.

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superdestroyer

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Having multiple academies in the same school does not make the school feel smaller. It just creates more strangers.

Think about the top 10% rule in Texas high schools. 90% of the kids know they are off the fast track by 11th grade. In Fairfax Virginia, if a kid is not in algebra in 7th grade, they know they are off the fast track.

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Kaleberg

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The NYC experience with those academies is that they do provide some sense of belonging. If nothing else, the teachers remember who you are and have time and energy to help you.

(Mind you, I went to a huge high school and loved it. Aside from my friends, I liked the fact that the teachers barely remembered me and the place was full of strangers.)

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Anonymous

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I kind of think the opposite as in the case of larger schools students can easily get lost with no friend groups. Larger schools are more like big cities—they have a sense of anonymity. Smaller school are more like a small town. All the stereotypes about stratification between nerds, jocks, theatre kids, etc. are almost totally absent in large, racially diverse schools, where the lines of division (if there are any) are more so along lines of racial self-segregation.

I agree that small schools for various reasons are better, but not because there’s less competition, in fact there might be more

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Zote

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I think we need to separate school size from racial diversity. My wife is an urban middle school teaching and I agree that urban schools don't have the "jocks vs. nerds" dynamics or the bullying. But I don't think that's because of racial diversity per se. I think it's more socioeconomic - children of affluence fall into the pursuit of social status because there isn't really anything else to strive for. It's the origin story for "stuff white people like".

But within a typical predominately white middle class school neighborhoods, small private schools don't have the "jocks vs. nerds" dynamic. The are maybe 15 or 25 kids and they largely all hang out with each other. Some are more well-liked than others of course, but you don't have anything a subdivision into difference cliques.

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Harvey Bungus

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I thought about this a lot as a teen, because I went from studying a few hours a week to basically doing nothing but school in my final year. I am still studying for exams and working full-time now but the burden weighs much lighter.

Education is a unique burden:

1) Who works harder for more delayed pay? As a high school junior life as pretty easy. As a high school senior taking AP classes, I was easily logging 60+ hour weeks, and my reward was scholarship money. That's not nothing, but it's definitely not money in your pocket! Research people on stipends get more cash than high school seniors.

2) There's the common aspect of "You have very little control over your life, and you feel like you ought to have more agency." All of this is true. My contribution: Your parents also feel like they have no agency over your life, and it is readily apparent for the first time. I was extremely nervous about college, but my parents ten times more so, and this sudden onloading of "Look kid, don't bankrupt the family" is quite a burden and change of pace from "just work hard and get good grades."

3) If you have hardworking peers, you lose each other - I can't say for certain, but I felt that I had less control over my schedule than my parents had over theirs, at least after we all got home. My friends were much the same. We saw each other much less, but we saw our "friends outside of school" even less, and spent *even less* time with our families. All this while each of our hobbies was compressed into a Girardian hell -> Pr(entrance into a particular university) that dwarfed even class rank. So yes, school is a unique peer interaction, but that's just the incentives mattering...

4) The fluff. So many activities for applying to college are sheer fluff. 300 word essays about overcoming adversity, service projects that don't go anywhere or accomplish anything, having to report all the nothing you do. It's downright depressing. The best thing for fraud prevention in this country is accepting a kid into college so that he doesn't really have to start that charity about _____, end up getting 501c3 at his advisor's insistence, and going full FTX just to boost the numbers on this Common App.

5) The implication about all of your accomplishments and hard work is that they do not matter, and that in fact you'd be best to jettison your peers to do things that do matter. Accordingly, a lot of people end up trying to jettison you.

6) Although I agree that the age segregation is probably bad, I remember enjoying it at the time, because adults wanted to talk about what a unique thing it was to be a teen, which sort of defeats the spirit of blending age cohorts. My younger siblings on the other hand were very cool.

7) The use of technology for convenience of sharing work was probably detrimental to face-to-face hangouts. Simply sitting at a table with friends beats IM'ing the calculus homework back and forth.

All of this was at a majority-Asian Catholic school, so the standard woke debates don't really apply here. The woke in schools is a separate thing - the problem is just the school.

In a lecture somewhere, Tyler remarks how unusual the American lifetime divvies up leisure, mostly at the end. Teen years are the beginning of the end, and there is surprisingly little leisure to be found in a hundred-thousand-dollar-buy-in, zero-sum games.

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catter

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Mencken wrote a short piece describing the life of a child in school, in terms quite similar to yours. He ended it by pointing out that the kid had to cope without alcohol or cynicism.

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rayward

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Ignorance is bliss. For adolescent boys anyway. Many studies attribute adolescent unhappiness to tech, especially social media. That's Jonathan Haidt's explanation. Douthat concurs, but he blames the rise in secularization and the fall in Christian identification. Here's something: while girls rather than boys are more likely to experience unhappiness (low life satisfaction), when boys experience it, they experience it on steroids.

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Kaleberg

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Women are more likely to attempt suicide, but more likely to fail. Men are less likely to try, but more likely to succeed. It's like that exchange in Gigi, "Did you here that X was so upset, she tried to commit suicide." "No, how?" "The usual, insufficient poison."

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The Eigenvalue

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Unlike when I grew up, the kids aspiring to be viable candidates for a good four-year college or university bust their asses beginning in middle school in hopes of obtaining high GPA and SAT scores. The remaining kids can look forward to little better than being the assistant produce manager at the local grocery store. Not much joy in either alternative.

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rsm

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Why don't classical liberals support liberalization of suicide markets, so those of us who refuse to dedicate ourselves to increasing GDP can take ourselves out? Isn't suicide normalization just cost effective?

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jason y

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adolescent unhappiness has markedly increased since 2012, but standardized test scores have declined over the same period in every ethnic group except asians. asians have also seen one of the smallest increases in unhappiness.

no. the cause is almost definitely what everyone suspects it is.

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Kaleberg

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The big increase in unhappiness starting around 2012 was for girls. Boys are about as happy or unhappy as ever. Some blame social media, and I've seen what it can do, if only by inducing anxiety and, more seriously, insomnia.

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Howard

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Young people do not want to admit that they are just "normal" -- White, Cis, Hetero, boys or girls. THey seek an identity that is in one sense "not normal" -- they are gay, or bi, or "seeking"; they are trans or trans-inquiring; they have an eating disorder; they are depressed or ADHD or bi-polar. Just give me one identification that allows me to claim "I'm not normal". Normalcy is not cool. It's just not cool.

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Kaleberg

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It's like Jane Lane in Daria, "I like having low self esteem. It makes me feel special."

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rsm

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Am I reading this correctly, that you want to ram your idea of what they should be down their throats?

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shadeun

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As The Offspring said.... The Kids Aren't Alright

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M

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As NOFX said "What’s the Matter with Kids Today?" - https://genius.com/Nofx-whats-the-matter-with-kids-today-lyrics

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superdestroyer

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It has to do with the Darwinian nature of education and early careers. Not everyone gets to go to Harvard. Yet, most students realize that ever step down in quality in college attendance removes some career pathways. In addition, the demand for parental support is so many entry level jobs with relocation expenses, low entry pay, and did to have worked unpaid internships also takes careers off the table.

When most kids are being told to not pursue their passions because those passions are unrealistic and have a low probability of success, how can they not be depressed.

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Hazel Meade

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Yet, most students realize that ever step down in quality in college attendance removes some career pathways.

Not sure if true. An ivy league education may make it *easier* to get a job as a hedge fund manager, but it is not a requirement.

Also, if you think that IQ is a stronger determinant of success than class/parental income, then you ought to save money on school, go to an affordable state college, and then work your way up. People will recognize your intelligence and ability, and disregard the (less observable) fact that you didn't go to Harvard.

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So Much For Subtlety

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An ivy league education may make it *easier* to get a job as a hedge fund manager, but it is not a requirement.

America is becoming much more oligarchic. You can look at the top job. There was a time when you could be President *and* illiterate (or close enough to it). President and not even able to speak English properly. President and self-taught while working on a canal.

Since Nixon about half of all Presidents have gone to Harvard or Yale law school. Those that did not have been treated as illegitimate by the left (who mostly went to Harvard and Yale I expect). You only have to notice that the three who didn't were Trump, Nixon himself and LBJ so it is not an ideological thing.

If you want to be President and drone people with full media approval you had better go to Harvard Law School

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Dino the Isaurian

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Neither Carter nor Reagan went to Harvard or Yale.

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superdestroyer

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Over 40 years ago. Until Trump was elected, I thought the U.S. would never elect a president with just an undergraduate degree again.

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Anonymous

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For populists candidates, and the future is populist, such a degree would probably hurt, and I suspect it will be a liability for politicians such as Desantis, Cruz, and Hawley.

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Harvard

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The hyper-competitive environment & pressure to succeed at, say Harvard & Ivy leagues is actually pretty depressing for many people. Kids at Ivies seem a lot more stressed out & unhappy than at a generic state school, where there's more authentic socializing & less "networking," extracurriculars for resumes, difficulty of keeping up with highly competitive peers etc

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Thanatos Savehn

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My first boss was taking home almost $1 million / yr 30+ yrs ago and yet he had a chip on his shoulder. It bothered him no end that he'd gone to State U. but dealt mostly with Ivy League types with Ivy League tastes. So, he made the appropriate donations and sent his daughters away to a fancy eastern boarding school; presumably so that they wouldn't suffer his humiliating fate.

Flash forward eight years and they were both back in town, married, popping out babies and doing the Junior League thing - and were, and still are, happy as can be; enjoying their collective eleven grandchildren. My conclusion? Take Your Daughter To Work Day was, for many women, a terrible mistake on Dad's part and we should learn from the lucky daughters who escaped the fate that my boss ought to have been worrying about.

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Kaleberg

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So, that works for people making $1M a year. What about the daughters of people making less? There are a lot of them.

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Moose

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This is a genuine, non-rhetorical question: what possible reason could they have for NOT being unhappy? My first impulse upon reading the excerpt is to applaud their astute assessment of the situation.

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rsm

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The real question isn't why did the shooter crack, it's why don't they ALL crack?

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M

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As a teacher who has been working in middle school for the past 10 years I actually think this whole thing comes back to the behavior of adults. Teachers and parents alike simply do not want to step fully into their roles. I so often here a teacher say “I didn’t want to enforce that rule because then the kids wouldn’t like me,” and then they complain behavior is out of control. Parents are equally guilty. We’ve known for years that unlimited access to phones was bad for kids, yet parents are more permissive than ever. The old “call home to your parents,” used to be the most dreaded punishment of them all a school could use. Now kids are calling their parents complaining about teachers before we have a chance to. This is all combined with an anxiety over the actions and experiences of children, the likes of which society has ever known. Over and under engagement all at once. I count myself lucky to have had calm, kind, and clear parents and teachers who would rather have me mad at them for 24 hours than mad at them for a lifetime.

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rsm

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What if you end up arbitrarily enforcing stupid rules like "no ChatGPT for you!"?

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xiugad

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Competition makes people's life miserable.

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MikeP

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Moreover, our analysis suggests that this apparent paradox can largely be attributed to higher learning intensity in advanced countries.

The correlation with life satisfaction could be about independence and productivity, which are delayed by school in order to accrue intellectual capital.

That's likely a worthwhile price to pay. The learning would be to provide more independence and more opportunity for productivity or other true accomplishment to adolescents.

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You can have learning without safetyism, destroying independence, etc.

16

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Kids have zero freedom compared to past, zero independence, instead weened on the unsatisfying (but addictive) electronic teat. Of course kids are unhappy. What's more fun, being huck finn on the river or US Grant riding around on horseback in Indian country, or watching yet another pointless youtube video? We've also ensured those most bored by school remain stuck with it, instead of letting them learn a trade at 26. Etc.

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M

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How does this square with within-country series for the US and Britain - as recently as 2017 - showing that adults are less happy than teenagers?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/massive-study-suggests-youll-progressively-154352441.html

https://www.cityam.com/this-is-the-age-when-youre-happiest-life-satisfaction-study-shows-were-most-anxious-in-middle-age-and-happiest-after-65/

I suppose in theory you could square this by suggesting that the hedonic drop is *really* high for less developed countries between 16 - 25, but...

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TMC

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'adults are less happy than teenagers' makes a lot more sense. Job pressures along with raising little kids takes its toll.

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Bernard Guerrero

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I don't think the claims contradict each other. The study is saying that increasing per capita GDP = increasing happiness for adults but not for teenagers.

You are claiming that adults are generally less happy than teenagers.

Both of these can logically be true at the same time, and don't even sound contradictory at the "story" level.

- More adult responsibilities = less happiness

- More adult resources = more happiness

- A richer society = a more annoying youth/young adulthood, because you tend to be educated more thoroughly for longer, tracked, need to delay adulthood, etc.

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M

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Well, let's look at integrating Blanchflower's age and happiness curve for the UK, here, which covers 16-19 year olds - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-020-00797-z/figures/3

With this study's estimate for the UK - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-022-00595-2/figures/4

Blanchflower estimates that life-satisfaction on a 1-10 scale for 16-19 year olds is around 8.5, declines to 7.4 for 44-48 year olds.

This study from PISA date estimates that the UK sits on 6.1 for adolescents, one of the lowest levels.

So if we renormalize Blanchflower to start at 6.1 (assuming that the PISA is right about teens and Blanchflower right about the life course), then the middle aged in UK should sit at around 5.0.

To reconcile that with lower adult happiness in less developed countries, life satisfaction would require a remarkably large plummet in less developed countries, from 8 (per their scale), to something like 3-4 out of 10. That is not infeasible but is very low!

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Keith

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Social media is a 24/7 always-on ubiquitous bullying machine that a teen can't escape. That's my best explanation.

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Dzoldzaya

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I couldn't access the study, but surely if intensive learning is the driving factor, and East Asian teens are therefore way less happy than Europeans, then this should be the headline figure, rather than framing it as a 'GDP paradox'.

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rsm

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Why does South Korea have such a high suicide rate, and GDP?

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Kaleberg

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Something to consider is that this is a cross society effect. These kids aren't just living in the US. The happiest kids are in Kazakhstan and the most unhappy are in Turkey, both middle income countries.

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Chris

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My theory: the richer we get the longer we extend childhood robbing adolescents of agency.

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Trevor G

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> Just more evidence of how feminization is ruining everything.

"Everything" is a rather bold, comprehensive ontological claim - do you have the goods to back up this fact?

> Sound likes barefoot and in the kitchen is the proper place for teenage girls.

How things sound are not necessarily how they are, but it often seems like it due to the various flaws in human consciousness combined with the various flaws in human culture.

Do you think it would be interesting to know how it really is?

Respond

Trevor G

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> Why are adolescents so unhappy?

It's a good question! Shame we don't have an adequately sophisticated platform to investigate complex metaphysical questions like this. We *could* have one, but only if certain stars align, Mr. Cowen. :)

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TGGP

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What are you talking about?

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Trevor G

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I am talking about an email conversation with Tyler that he may have lost track of, so now and then I drop a comment like this on relevant threads to see if I can pique his interest.

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superdestroyer

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Maybe it is because most middle schoolers are A-holes, borderline sociopath, and sadist.

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Trevor G

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Maybe!

But then alternatively: maybe not! After all, you are necessarily guessing, right? :)

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DF

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Adolescents of rich countries look at at the material comforts which fill their parents lives with meaning and fall into despair.

- Research Paper

- Published:

The Paradox of Wealthy Nations’ Low Adolescent Life Satisfaction

- Robert Rudolf &

- Dirk Bethmann

Journal of Happiness Studies

volume

24,

pages

79–105 (2023)Cite this article

- 645 Accesses

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details

Abstract

Using PISA 2018 data from nearly half a million 15-year-olds across 72 middle- and high-income countries, this study investigates the relationship between economic development and adolescent subjective well-being. Findings indicate a negative log-linear relationship between per-capita GDP and adolescent life satisfaction. The negative nexus stands in stark contrast to the otherwise positive relationship found between GDP per capita and adult life satisfaction for the same countries. Results are robust to various model specifications and both macro and micro approaches. Moreover, our analysis suggests that this apparent paradox can largely be attributed to higher learning intensity in advanced countries. Effects are found to be more pronounced for girls than for boys.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Notes

1. We define learning intensity as the product of quantity and complexity of learning tasks completed by a student within a given time period, e.g., a school year. The amount of learning that happens in school is known to be positively correlated with the level of economic development of a country. Due to differing returns to education across nations, Becker et al. (1990) concluded that “societies with limited human capital choose large families and invest little in each member; those with abundant human capital do the opposite”. Hence, parental investment in education of their offspring is highest in high-income countries, and so are the expectations that teachers and parents have in the actual cognitive efforts that children exert (Becker et al., 1990; Mincer, 1984). Given the importance of education and the overall level of development, high-income countries also provide higher school quality (World Bank, 2017; 2021). According to the World Bank (2017), “37 million African children will learn so little in school that they will not be much better off than kids who never attended school”. The secular expansion of schooling and of cognitive effort over the twentieth century economic development processes of OECD nations have further been associated with generational gains in intelligence levels and growth in the human prefrontal cortex (Blair et al., 2005; Flynn 1984, 1987).

2. A growing body of literature documents declining levels of adolescent SWB between the ages 10 and 15 (Casas and González-Carrasco, 2019). If it is true that schoolwork pressure and test requirements increased during early teen age, it would be advisable to control for education-related factors (Wiklund et al., 2012). Comparing PISA 2015 and 2018 data, Marquez and Long (2021) find declining levels of adolescent life satisfaction in 39 out of 46 countries over time.

3. Among the 72 countries that measured life satisfaction, the measure was reported by 92.4 percent of students. PISA 2018 data does not contain math, reading, and science scores for Vietnam, and for Spain it does not contain reading scores. When test scores were reported for a country, they were reported for 100 percent of students, without any missing values.

4. All variables are measured for the year 2018. In case of missing values in 2018, the earliest year available is being used.

5. Positive and negative emotions were asked in the following manner: “Thinking about yourself and how you normally feel: how often do you feel […]?” (response scale: "1" = 'never', "2" = 'rarely', "3" = 'sometimes', "4" = 'always'). Individual averages across four positive emotions (happy, joyful, cheerful, lively) were used to construct a measure of positive emotions, while averages across four negative emotions (afraid, scared, sad, miserable) were used to construct a measure of negative emotions. Lastly, meaning in life is measured using a 3-item index of perceived meaning in life constructed and provided by the OECD’s PISA team. Students were asked to report the extent to which they agree with the statements: “My life has clear meaning or purpose”; “I have discovered a satisfactory meaning in life”; and “I have a clear sense of what gives meaning to my life.” The index was scaled using a generalized partial credit model and values of the index correspond to Warm likelihood estimates (WLE). The estimates were then standardized so that the mean of the index value for the OECD student population was zero and the standard deviation was one (equal weight given to countries) (OECD, 2019b; 2021).

6. We average across all three subjects to proxy for the average level of academic performance by country. However, in a separate robustness check we will examine whether our results hold when using separate test scores by subject.

7. Positive goal interdependence (co-operation) leads to promotive interaction and exists when individuals perceive that they can reach their goals if and only if the people with whom they are co-operatively linked also reach their goals. Negative goal interdependence (competition) exists when individuals perceive that they can obtain their goals if and only if the people with whom they are competitively linked fail to obtain their goals, and results in oppositional interaction. No goal interdependence leads to no interaction.

8. Individual-level variables were selected from a larger pool of individual controls. The ones remaining proved to be particularly significant for adolescent well-being.

9. Adult life satisfaction is taken from the 2018 Gallup World Poll reported in the World Happiness Report (Helliwell et al., 2019). It is based on the Cantril Ladder. Since data on adult life satisfaction was missing for 2 countries, the number of countries in Fig. 2 is 70.

10. We distinguish Confucian and Non-Confucian countries in East Asia, given the much stronger educational competition in the former. Confucian societies include Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Macao.

11. Data on adult life satisfaction was only available for 70 out of the 72 countries. When restricting the sample in column (1) to these 70 countries, the coefficient estimate for ln GDP per capita is similar (coeff. -0.360; s.e. 0.086).

12. We checked for the presence of multicollinearity among regressors of model (6) in Table 3. VIFs were all below 4. Interestingly, competition and co-operation showed a positive bivariate correlation, indicating that these can be complementing each other (ρ = 0.39).

13. Imputed values are predicted based on a multivariate regression of lower secondary net enrollment on ln GDP per capita, average and expected years of schooling for 2018 from the Human Development Index, as well as 10 world region dummies.

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Funding

Research funding was provided by Korea University, Grant Number K2001391.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. College of International Studies, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Robert Rudolf

2. Department of Economics, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Dirk Bethmann

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Correspondence to Dirk Bethmann.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables

Table 8 Summary statistics (micro regressions)

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8 and

Table 9 Estimations using by-subject test scores

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9.

See Figs.

Fig. 3

figure 3

Per-capita GDP and adolescent life satisfaction (by world region)

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3,

Fig. 4

figure 4

Academic performance and adolescent life satisfaction

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4,

Fig. 5

figure 5

Per-capita GDP and adolescent life satisfaction (including PISA for development countries)

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5, and

Fig. 6

figure 6

Per-capita GDP and adolescent life satisfaction (quadratic fit), (including Pisa for development countries)

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6.

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Rudolf, R., Bethmann, D. The Paradox of Wealthy Nations’ Low Adolescent Life Satisfaction. J Happiness Stud 24, 79–105 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-022-00595-2

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