What explains the well-being differences between immigrant and native adolescents? The role of host country characteristics across the world.
Kelsey J. O’Connor, Martijn Hendriks, Jose Marquez, and Fengyu Wu
Publisher: International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies Publication Date: October 28, 2025 Series ID: ISQOLS-WP-13 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17567901
Abstract
Immigrant adolescents generally report lower subjective well-being (SWB) than their native peers, representing an important dimension of inequality among adolescents... Using data for more than 750,000 15-year-old students across 42 countries from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015, 2018, and 2022 waves, we contribute, finding immigrant adolescents report, on average, 0.24 points lower life satisfaction (on a 0-10 scale) than their native peers. However, this gap varies widely across countries, from a positive 0.23 (where immigrants are more satisfied) to a negative 0.83. To explain the difference in gaps across countries, we show that they are systematically related to macro-level factors. Immigrant adolescents fare relatively worse than native adolescents in countries with: lower uncertainty avoidance (a cultural dimension), larger and more diverse immigrant populations, and weaker institutional quality. These findings highlight the importance of national contexts, especially culture, in shaping SWB inequalities between immigrant and native adolescents.
