New paper from the HBSC study: Educational inequalities in adolescent life satisfaction

 

We are happy to announce the recent publication of a paper stemming from the HBSC study, examining the role of health behaviour and gender in educational inequalities in adolescent life satisfaction.

But first things first: What is the HBSC study?

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The Health Behaviour in School-aged Children is a cross-national study looking into young people’s well-being, health behaviour and social context. Since almost 30 years, data from adolescents from 43 countries across Europe and North America are collected every 4 years, providing useful insight and informing policy with the purpose of improving the life of adolescents.

At IJPH we value the work of HBSC and we regularly publish parts of it (some recent examples here, here and here. And a whole special issue here).

This recently published study by Irene Moor and colleagues looks into educational inequalities in life satisfaction in German adolescents. Data stem from over 5,000 adolescents aged between 11 and 15 years. The main results can be summarized as follows:

– Boys face higher educational inequalities compared to girls

– Several health behaviours are singificantly associated with educational track among boys and others among girls

– Certain unhealthy behaviours are linked to low satisfaction and differ partly by gender

– For girls, health behaviour contributed almost twice as much to educational inequalities in life satisfaction than for boys

The authors conclude that, in order to tackle inequalities in adolescent health, behavioural factors should be targeted at adolescents from lower educational tracks, with special focus on gender differences.

What do you think? How could such inequalities be dealt with?

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