TY - GEN A1 - Reuter, Marvin A1 - Herke, Max A1 - Richter, Matthias A1 - Diehl, Katharina A1 - Hoffmann, Stephanie A1 - Pischke, Claudia R. A1 - Dragano, Nico T1 - Young people’s health and well-being during the school-to-work transition: a prospective cohort study comparing post-secondary pathways T2 - BMC Public Health N2 - Background: At the end of secondary education, young people can either start vocational training, enter university, directly transition to employment or become unemployed. Research assumes that post-secondary pathways have immediate and/or long-term impacts on health and well-being, but empirical investigations on this are scarce and restricted to few countries. Therefore, this study traced the development of health and well-being throughout the highly institutionalised school-to-work transition (STWT) in Germany. Methods: We used longitudinal data of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), a representative sample of 11,098 school-leavers (50.5% girls) repeatedly interviewed between 2011 and 2020. We estimated the effect of post-secondary transitions on self-rated health and subjective well-being by applying fixed-effects (FE) regression, elimi-nating bias resulting from time-constant confounding and self-selection into different pathways. A multiple-sample strategy was used to account for the increasing diversity of STWTs patterns. Models were controlled for age, as well as household and residential changes to minimise temporal heterogeneity. Results: Findings indicate that leaving school was good for health and well-being. Compared with participants who did not find a training position after school, direct transitions to vocational training or university were linked to higher absolute levels of health and well-being, but also to a lower relative decline over time. Furthermore, upward transi-tions (e.g. to programs leading to better education or from unemployment to employment) were associated with improvements in health and well-being, while downward transitions were followed by deteriorations. Conclusion: Findings suggest that school-leave is a sensitive period and that post-secondary pathways provide young people with different abilities to maintain health and well-being. Youth health interventions might benefit when setting a stronger focus on unsuccessful school-leavers. KW - School-to-work transition KW - Institutional context KW - Vocational training KW - Apprenticeship KW - University KW - Prevocational preparation KW - Self-rated health KW - Subjective well-being KW - National Educational Panel Study KW - NEPS Y1 - 2022 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-UBICO/frontdoor/index/index/docId/29312 SN - 1471-2458 VL - 22 SP - 1 EP - 13 ER -