Younger and Dissatisfied? Relative Age and Life-Satisfaction in Adolescence

No 11990, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This is the first study to investigate whether age gaps between classmates (that is, relative age) affect life-satisfaction gaps in adolescence. To this end, we analyse data from the multi-country Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) survey. We find evidence that relative age negatively impacts adolescents' life-satisfaction. A twelve-month age gap decreases life-satisfaction, rated on a 0-10 scale, by 0.3 points. This negative effect is consistent across countries. Finally, this negative effect does not decrease with the increase in absolute age.

Keywords: Europe; adolescents; life-satisfaction; education; relative age (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C26 I21 I31 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2018-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - revised version published as 'Younger, Dissatisfied, and Unhealthy? Relative Age and Life-satisfaction in Adolescence' (with additional coauthor: Francesco Sarracino) in: Economics & Human Biology , 2019, 168, 313 - 337

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp11990.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Younger and Dissatisfied? Relative Age and Life-satisfaction in Adolescence (2018)
Working Paper: Younger and Dissatisfied? Relative Age and Life-satisfaction in Adolescence (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11990

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().