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Grades – for Better or Worse? The Interplay of School Performance and Subjective Well-Being Among Boys and Girls

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Abstract

We examine adolescents’ subjective well-being and investigate how it is related to school performance, gender and class origin. We hypothesize that school performance as indicated by school grades, is associated to subjective well-being in a gendered and class-dependent way. Two well-being dimensions are examined: “general subjective well-being” and “lack of psychosomatic symptoms.” We use a unique dataset combining survey data on subjective well-being with individual-level registry data on school achievement (school grades) among secondary school children in Sweden, in their lower teens, 12–16 years of age. Our results reveal a positive association between school grades and “general subjective well-being” – for both boys and girls. The conclusions on “lack of psychosomatic symptoms” show no association with grades for boys, while for girls this association is related to class origin. The findings emphasize the importance of taking gender into account when studying the association between subjective well-being and class origin among young people.

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Notes

  1. All indicators used have factor scores ranging from 0.42 to 0.81 using Principal Component analysis with Varimax Rotation.

  2. Can be requested from authors.

  3. Because we are trying to shed light on gender dimensions in any correlation between young people’s subjective well-being and their academic performance, we examined whether there were different outcomes for boys or girls depending on which of the parental class positions was analyzed. After using mother’s class position, father’s class position and the “dominant” class position of the parents, we could see that the “dominant” class position displayed the most evident difference between the young people.

  4. Can be requested from authors.

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Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at University of Gothenburg and at the annual Meeting of the Network for Research on Social Policy and Welfare. We are thankful for many and appreciated comments from the participants of the seminars. We especially want to thank, Ingemar Johansson Sevä, Jennie Bacchus Hertzman, Tomas Berglund, Patrik Vulkan and Mattias Strandh.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg, PO Box 720, 405 30, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Erica Nordlander

  2. Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, PO Box Box 711, 405 30, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Helena Olofsdotter Stensöta

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  1. Erica Nordlander
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  2. Helena Olofsdotter Stensöta
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Correspondence to Erica Nordlander.

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Nordlander, E., Stensöta, H.O. Grades – for Better or Worse? The Interplay of School Performance and Subjective Well-Being Among Boys and Girls. Child Ind Res 7, 861–879 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-014-9233-y

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