Why Did the Gender Gap in Adolescent Life Satisfaction Grow? Evaluating Methodological and Demographic Explanations

Abstract The city of Leipzig in Germany conducts large-scale school surveys of adolescents in secondary schools. While in 2010 and 2015 girls were somewhat less satisfied than boys, in 2023 this gender gap had doubled. Why? When asking such a reverse causal question, answers often focus on broad narratives, such as the psychological impact of social media. Here, we illustrate how to probe alternative explanations, such as demographic changes and methodological issues. First, we rule out that the observed pattern is a simple scaling artifact. Second, we find that the widening of the gender gap is much more pronounced among students with a migration background. This could plausibly be explained by a shift in the composition of the underlying population, with a strong increase in the proportion of Syrian students, and a relative decrease of Vietnamese students. Third, part of the increasing gender gap could potentially be attributed to survey mode: In 2023, for the first time, the survey was conducted on tablets—and unexpectedly, girls (but not boys) reported significantly lower satisfaction when surveyed on tablet rather than on paper. Lastly, beyond these patterns, we still find significantly widening gender gaps in satisfaction with leisure time activities and relationships to friends. Thus, there may be a substantive increase in the gender gap in satisfaction in those two domains that is not readily attributable to changes in demographics and survey mode.