@article{NeugebauerPatzinaDietrichetal.2023, author = {Neugebauer, Martin and Patzina, Alexander and Dietrich, Hans and Sandner, Malte}, title = {Two pandemic years greatly reduced young people's life satisfaction: evidence from a comparison with pre-COVID-19 panel data}, series = {European Sociological Review}, volume = {40}, journal = {European Sociological Review}, number = {5}, publisher = {Oxford University Press (OUP)}, issn = {0266-7215}, doi = {10.1093/esr/jcad077}, pages = {872 -- 886}, year = {2023}, 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.}, language = {en} }