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Youths’ Perceived Coping with the COVID-19 Pandemic and Subjective Well-Being: The Moderating Role of Subjective Social Status

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Abstract

Using panel data from Luxembourg, we investigate the relationship between young individuals’ perceived coping with the COVID-19 pandemic context and subjective well-being during the short and mid-term phases of the pandemic (i.e., a few months after its outbreak in July 2020 and one year later in July 2021). Additionally, the study examines how this relationship evolves depending on youths’ subjective social status. Luxembourg is an important setting, as it is one of the happiest countries in the world, with the highest GDP per capita. According to our results, perceived coping with the COVID-19 context matters for subjective well-being beyond individual and macro characteristics. We found a strong correlation between perceptions of coping with the COVID-19 pandemic context and subjective well-being in high-social-status individuals and a weaker correlation for low- and middle-social-status individuals. Furthermore, the relationship between perceptions of coping with the pandemic and well-being was stable over time. The article stipulates several reasons for these results, such as a ‘comfort conditioning’ response to the pandemic for young high-social-status individuals.

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Notes

  1. Subjective well-being research shows, nonetheless, that we could expect some degree of adaptation in terms of perceived coping with the situation and subjective well-being in the longer term of the pandemic (see Sen, 1987). The growing availability of panel data surveys showed that even if individuals never fully adapt to some situations, a certain degree of adaptation in terms of subjective well-being will likely occur, for example, in unemployment (Clark et al., 2008), income variability (Van Praag & Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2011), partner relationships after unemployment experience (Blom & Perelli-Harris, 2021), or disabilities (Oswald & Powdthavee, 2008).

  2. The Luxembourg government COVID-19 data information site (Le Gouvernement Luxembourgeois 2022) shows similar daily new confirmed cases and deaths in July 2020 and 2021. These percentages were relatively low compared to other epidemic peaks such as those in April 2020, December 2020, March 2021, or January 2022. Similar patterns were observed in neighbouring countries (Germany, France, and Belgium). For more information on the incidence of the pandemic among youth individuals, see the report (Schomaker et al., 2021).

  3. A regression with the missing cases of our sample shows no attrition effects. The model controlled for the variables introduced in the main models as well as new ones that could potentially affect the missing cases (e.g., municipality of the respondent, migration status). The new variables appeared as not significant for the missing cases and thus were not included in the main models. These results can be provided upon request.

  4. Robustness checks changing the operationalisation of subjective social status to equalise the number of individuals within each group gave the same qualitative nature of results (see Appendix A).

  5. For an overview of the general evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic in Luxembourg, see: https://covid19.public.lu/fr/graph.html (last visited: 30/01/2024).

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Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the international conferences: “Well-being 2021: knowledge for informed decisions” of STATEC, June 28—30, 2022 Luxembourg; “Social Stratification and Social Policy for a Post-Covid19 World” of RC28, April 21—23, 2022 London School of Economics, Department of Social Policy (UK). We are grateful for the very helpful comments received as well as those from our colleagues in our regular seminars at the Centre for Childhood and Youth Research at the University of Luxembourg. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Children and Youth and the Luxembourg National Research Fund [Grant Number 147204589].

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  1. Department of Social Sciences, University of Luxembourg, Campus Belval, Porte Des Sciences, 11, 4366, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

    Roger Fernandez-Urbano & Robin Samuel

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  1. Roger Fernandez-Urbano
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Correspondence to Roger Fernandez-Urbano.

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Appendices

Appendix A: Subjective Social Status Operationalisation

See Tables 

Table 4 Subjective social status operationalised: 0–4, low; 5–7, middle; 8–10, highPredicting life satisfaction and perceived coping with the COVID-19 pandemic context by subjective social status using ordinary least squares fixed-effects regression models
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4 and

Table 5 Subjective social status operationalised: 0–5, low; 6–8, middle; 9–10, high Predicting life satisfaction and perceived coping with current conditions by subjective social status using ordinary least square fixed-effects regression models
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5.

Appendix B: Histograms with Overall and Restricted Samples

See Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Histograms with overall and restricted samples in terms of subjective well-being and perceived coping with the COVID-19 pandemic context

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Appendix C: Interaction with Subjective Social Status

See Table 

Table 6 Predicting life satisfaction and perceived coping with the COVID-19 pandemic context using ordinary least square fixed-effects regression models
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6.

Appendix D: Interaction with Mid-Term COVID-19

See Figs. 2 and 3.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Life satisfaction and perceived coping with the COVID-19 pandemic context (0–10, better to worse) in the short term and mid-term of the COVID-19 pandemic (predicted values) with 95% confidence intervals

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Fig. 3
figure 3

Life satisfaction and perceived coping with the COVID-19 pandemic context (0–10, better to worse) in the short term and long term of the COVID-19 pandemic. Predicted values for individuals of high, middle, and low subjective social status with 95% confidence intervals

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Appendix E: Additional Descriptive Statistics

See Table 

Table 7 Descriptive statistics of the entire sample without wave distinctions
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7.

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Fernandez-Urbano, R., Samuel, R. Youths’ Perceived Coping with the COVID-19 Pandemic and Subjective Well-Being: The Moderating Role of Subjective Social Status. Soc Indic Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-024-03307-w

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