Why Has the Gender Gap in Life Satisfaction Grown Among Adolescents in Leipzig?

The city of Leipzig in Germany conducts large-scale school surveys of adolescents in secondary education schools. Following the regular surveys in 2010 and 2015, the 2020 survey had to be rescheduled to 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this latest survey wave, the gender gap in general life satisfaction has significantly grown. While in 2010 and 2015 girls were somewhat less satisfied than boys (0.26 to 0.33 SD), in 2023 this gender gap had doubled (with girls 0.57 SD less satisfied). Why? Here, we probe various explanations, aiming to provide a template for researchers who are asking reverse causal questions (“What caused this?”). First, we find that the widening of the gender gap is much more pronounced among students with a migration background. This could plausibly be explained by a shift in the composition of the underlying population, with a strong increase of Syrian students, and a relative decrease of Vietnamese ones. Second, among students without a migration background, part of the increasing gender gap could potentially be attributed to survey mode: In 2023, for the first time, the survey was conducted on tablets—and unexpectedly, girls (but not boys) reported significantly lower satisfaction when surveyed on tablet rather than on paper. Third, beyond these two patterns, we still find significantly widening gender gaps in satisfaction with leisure time activities and relationships to friends. Thus, there may be a substantive increase in the gender gap in satisfaction in those two domains that is not readily attributable to changes in population and survey mode.