OHM Happiness Report (OHR)
(2023)
Die langfristige Lebenszufriedenheit (Happiness/Glücksempfinden) ehemaliger Studierender scheint maßgeblich mit ihrem subjektiven Glücksempfinden während der Zeit an der Hochschule zusammen zu hängen (Harker und Keltner, 2001). Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht der vorliegende Beitrag basierend auf Survey-Daten aus dem Jahr 2022 die Lebens- und Studienzufriedenheit der Studierenden an der TH Nürnberg Georg Simon Ohm. Unsere Analysen ergeben einen durchschnittlichen OHM Happiness Score von 6,93 Skalenpunkten. Dieser Wert liegt etwas über dem Durchschnitt der deutschen Bevölkerung (6,86), knapp unterhalb des arithmetischen Mittels in Bayern (7,06) und entspricht genau dem Glücksempfinden der Region Franken (6,94), in deren Zentrum Nürnberg die OHM zu Hause ist. International positioniert sich die OHM im Bereich der Bevölkerung von Ländern wie den USA (6,98), der Schweiz (6,94) oder der Tschechischen Republik (6,92). Wir zeigen, dass die Lebenszufriedenheit unter den Studierenden – analog zur Gesamtbevölkerung – während der Covid-19-Pandemie zurück gegangen ist. Das Covid-Happiness-Tal scheint mit der endgültigen Rückkehr in die Hörsäle im Jahr 2022 aber überwunden zu sein. Ferner zeigen wir, dass Studienzufriedenheit und Lebenszufriedenheit an der OHM positiv korrelieren und untersuchen, wie verschiedene Merkmale und Leistungen der Studierenden mit ihrer Happiness und Studienzufriedenheit zusammenhängen: eine höhere Selbstwirksamkeit geht mit einer deutlich höheren Lebens- und Studienzufriedenheit einher, dagegen sind schlechte Schul- und Studienleistungen, die Erwartung einer langen Studiendauer, Stress und Prokrastination mit einer geringeren Lebens- und Studienzufriedenheit verbunden. Schließlich steht ein höheres erwartetes Einstiegsgehalt in einem positiven Zusammenhang mit dem subjektiv empfundenen Glück, allerdings nur bis zu einem Jahresbruttogehalt von 60.000 Euro. Studierende, die einen höheren Verdienst erwarten, geben ein niedrigeres Glücksniveau an.
AbstractThis study examines the immediate and intermediate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the well-being of two high school graduation cohorts (2020 and 2021) and how changes in well-being affect students’ educational plans and outcomes. Our unique panel data on 3697 students from 214 schools in 8 German federal states contain prospective survey information on three dimensions of well-being: mental health problems, self-rated health, and life satisfaction. Data is collected several months before (fall 2019), shortly before and soon after (spring 2020) as well as several months after (fall/winter 2020/21) the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying difference-in-differences designs, random effect growth curve models, and linear regression models, we find that school closures had a positive immediate effect on students’ well-being. Over the course of the pandemic, however, well-being strongly declined, mainly among the 2021 graduation cohort. We show that a strong decline in mental health is associated with changes in educational and career plans and transition outcomes. As adverse life experiences in adolescence are likely to accumulate over the life course, this study is the first to exhibit potential long-lasting negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on education and careers of young individuals.
Home visiting programs constitute an important policy to support vulnerable families with young children. One of their principal aims is to improve infant-parent relationships, so a key measure of their effectiveness is based on observational measures of parent-children interactions. In the present study we provide novel evidence on the effectiveness of home visiting programs in improving mother-child interactions within a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the Pro Kind program. A major goal of the Pro Kind program is to promote child development by strengthening the intuitive parenting skills of mothers. On this basis, the following research question is addressed in this paper: What is the impact of the Pro Kind home visitation program on the quality of mother-child interaction?
Despite long-term interest in whether welfare benefits motivate fertility, evidence from research has not been consistent. This paper contributes new evidence to this debate by investigating the fertility effect of a German welfare reform. The reform decreased the household income of families on welfare by 18% in the first year after the birth of a baby. Using exclusive access to German social security data on over 460,000 affected women, our analysis finds that the reform leads to a fertility reduction of 6.8%. This result implies that for mothers on welfare, fertility has an income elasticity of 0.38, which is much smaller than that of general populations reported in the literature. Our findings suggest that welfare recipients’ fertility reacts less strongly to financial incentives than the fertility of overall populations.
Given the lasting positive effects of prenatal and infancy home visiting in the United States on disadvantaged mothers and children at school age, we analyzed the follow-up effects of a German home visiting program (ProKind). We hypothesized improvements in 3 domains at child age 7 years: (1) child development and life satisfaction, (2) maternal mental health and life satisfaction, and (3) adverse parenting, abusive parenting, and neglectful parenting.METHODSWe conducted a randomized controlled trial of home visiting, enrolling 755 pregnant, low-income women with no previous live births. The intervention comprised 32.7 home visits by family midwives and/or social pedagogues until child age 2 years. Assessments were completed on 533 7-year-old firstborn offspring to evaluate 8 primary hypotheses.
We found significant positive effects for 4 of the 8 primary hypotheses. Mothers in the intervention group reported fewer behavioral problems among their children in the Child Behavior Checklist (effect size [ES] = 0.21; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.03 to 0.38), less child abusive parenting (ES = 0.19; 95% CI: 0.00 to 0.37), fewer maternal mental health problems (ES = 0.25; 95% CI: 0.07 to 0.43), and higher maternal life satisfaction (ES = 0.25; 95% CI: 0.07 to 0.43). Additional preregistered subgroup analyses regarding child sex revealed larger effects for boys and mothers of boys.CONCLUSIONSThe results suggest that in a western European welfare state, home visiting targeting disadvantaged mothers has lasting effects in important outcome domains. Therefore, home visits also appear to be an effective and efficient public health intervention in European settings.