Researchers analyze immigrant adolescent well-being gap across 42 countries using PISA data; Smaller gap in uncertainty-avoidant, long-term cultures.

Researchers analyze immigrant adolescent well-being gap across 42 countries using PISA data; Smaller gap in uncertainty-avoidant, long-term cultures.

Eco&Stat n°06-2026 - Qu’est-ce qui explique les différences de bien-être entre les adolescents issus de l’immigration et les adolescents nés dans le pays à travers le monde ? Une analyse par courbes de spécification

N°147 08/2026 What explains the well-being differences between immigrant and native adolescents around the world? A specification curve analysis. Économie & Statistiques Working papers Auteurs : Kelsey J. O’Connor, Martijn Hendriks, Jose Marquez, and Fengyu Wu. Abstract Many countries are facing a crisis of declining adolescent well-being, and immigrant adolescents tend to fare even worse than their native peers. Yet, little is known about how country-level factors shape the immigrant-native gap in adolescent subjective well-being (SWB). Using data from more than 750,000 15-year-old students across 42 countries from the 2015, 2018, and 2022 waves of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), we explore this immigrant-native gap and examine its country-level determinants. Immigrant adolescents report 0.31 points lower life satisfaction (on a 0-10 scale) than their native peers; however, this gap varies widely across countries, ranging from a positive 0.23 (where immigrants are more satisfied) to a negative 0.83. Our main contribution is to examine this cross-national variation. Using specification-curve analyses, we show that country-level differences in the immigrant–native SWB gap are systematically related to macro- level factors. The SWB disadvantage of immigrant adolescents is smaller in cultures characterized by uncertainty avoidance and a long-term orientation, but larger in countries with larger and more diverse immigrant populations. While less robust, institutional quality and individualistic culture also correlate with a smaller SWB disadvantage among immigrant adolescents. These findings highlight the importance of national contexts, especially culture and demographic structure, in shaping SWB inequalities between immigrant and native adolescents. Keywords: subjective well-being, inequality, immigration, adolescence, PISA, culture O’Connor: Senior Researcher, STATEC Research (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies); GLO Fellow, Global Labor Organization (GLO); Research Fellow, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA); 12 Boulevard Du Jazz, 4370 Esch-Belval Sanem, Luxembourg. Phone: +352 247 84351. Email: Kelsey.OConnor@statec.etat.lu. ORCID: 0000-0002-1413-3619. Hendriks: Deputy Director, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Associate Professor, University of Johannesburg. hendriks@ese.eur.nl. Marquez: Research Fellow, Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester; Research Associate, Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Oxford. Email: jose.marquez@manchester.ac.uk. Wu: Researcher, STATEC Research (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies); GLO Fellow, Global Labor Organization (GLO); fengyu.wu@statec.etat.lu. The authors would like to thank Milena Nikolova and Carol Graham for helpful comments on an earlier draft. O’Connor and Wu gratefully acknowledge the financial support of STATEC. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect those of STATEC, Erasmus University Rotterdam, University of Johannesburg, University of Manchester, University of Oxford, GLO, or IZA. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. The authors declare they have no competing interests.

1 What explains the well-being differences between immigrant and native adolescents around the world? A specification curve analysis. By KELSEY J. O’CONNOR, MARTIJN HENDRIKS, JOSE MARQUEZ, AND FENGYU WU Many countries are facing a crisis of declining adolescent well-being, and immigrant adolescents tend to fare even worse than their native peers. Yet, little is known about how country-level factors shape the immigrant-native gap in adolescent subjective well-being (SWB). Using data from more than 750,000 15-year-old students across 42 countries from the 2015, 2018, and 2022 waves of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), we explore this immigrant-native gap and examine its country-level determinants. Immigrant adolescents report 0.31 points lower life satisfaction (on a 0-10 scale) than their native peers; however, this gap varies widely across countries, ranging from a positive 0.23 (where immigrants are more satisfied) to a negative 0.83. Our main contribution is to examine this cross-national variation. Using specification-curve analyses, we show that country-level differences in the immigrant–native SWB gap are systematically related to macro-level factors. The SWB disadvantage of immigrant adolescents is smaller in cultures characterized by uncertainty avoidance and a long-term orientation, but larger in countries with larger and more diverse immigrant populations. While less robust, institutional quality and individualistic culture also correlate with a smaller SWB disadvantage among immigrant adolescents. These findings highlight the importance of national contexts, especially culture and demographic structure, in shaping SWB inequalities between immigrant and native adolescents.

Keywords: subjective well-being, inequality, immigration, adolescence, PISA, culture

O’Connor: Senior Researcher, STATEC Research (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies); GLO Fellow, Global Labor Organization (GLO); Research Fellow, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA); 12 Boulevard Du Jazz, 4370 Esch-Belval Sanem, Luxembourg. Phone: +352 247 84351. Email: Kelsey.OConnor@statec.etat.lu. ORCID: 0000-0002-1413-3619. Hendriks: Deputy Director, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Associate Professor, University of Johannesburg. hendriks@ese.eur.nl. Marquez: Research Fellow, Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester; Research Associate, Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Oxford. Email: jose.marquez@manchester.ac.uk. Wu: Researcher, STATEC Research (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies); GLO Fellow, Global Labor Organization (GLO); fengyu.wu@statec.etat.lu.

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank Milena Nikolova and Carol Graham for helpful comments on an earlier draft. O’Connor and Wu gratefully acknowledge the financial support of STATEC. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect those of STATEC, Erasmus University Rotterdam, University of Johannesburg, University of Manchester, University of Oxford, GLO, or IZA. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. The authors declare they have no competing interests.

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1. Introduction As of 2020, 36 million children under the age of 18 lived outside their country of birth (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2020). This group is doubly vulnerable as immigrants (foreign-born1) tend to experience lower subjective well-being (SWB) than their native peers (Hendriks 2015) and because adolescents have experienced worrying trends in many countries recently (Haidt 2024; Marquez et al., 2024b). Adolescent SWB is important per se, and because adolescence is a pivotal developmental stage affecting the rest of life. Early and middle adolescence are characterized by identity exploration, peer socialization, and rapid cognitive and emotional growth (Steinberg, 2014). Experiences during this period, including levels of well- being, lay the foundation for long-term life trajectories, influencing outcomes ranging from career paths and income to mental health and overall well-being (Kim et al., 2024; Patton et al., 2016; De Neve & Oswald, 2012; Geijsen & Bartels, 2025; Clark et al., 2019). Understanding how immigrant adolescents fare compared to their native peers is especially critical. Negative experiences such as feeling relatively worse off than native peers may sow the seeds of long-term disadvantage for immigrant adolescents (Smith et al., 2012). As a particularly vulnerable group, they must navigate the challenges of adolescence while also coping with difficulties linked to their migration background, including integration into the host society. While positive experiences can buffer against stressors such as acculturation and discrimination, negative ones may intensify harmful effects and have enduring consequences in adulthood (Oppedal et al., 2022). Taken together, these considerations highlight the importance of focusing on inequality in SWB between native and immigrant adolescents, rather than on overall levels alone. Such inequality may capture perceived unfairness and differences in social inclusion that are not evident in average measures (Goff et al., 2018). Examining disparities in SWB can therefore shed light on how migration and social contexts shape adolescents’ sense of belonging and prospects for successful integration. Gaining a clearer understanding of the mechanisms driving these inequalities is essential for developing targeted interventions and policies that foster inclusion and help reduce well-being gaps. The existing literature on SWB gaps between immigrant and native adolescents is growing but remains incomplete. Cross-national research shows immigrant adolescents frequently report lower SWB compared to their native peers; however, this pattern is far from uniform across countries of residence (Stevens et al., 2015; Dinisman & Ben-Arieh, 2016; Bradshaw & Rees, 2017; OECD, 2018; Tang, 2019; Kern et al., 2020; Cerna et al., 2021; Delaruelle et al., 2021; Wang, 2021). Single-country studies also support this heterogeneous pattern. For instance, SWB levels were higher among “expatriate” students compared with their native peers in the United Arab Emirates (Marquez et al., 2023), but lower among adolescent immigrants and refugees in Germany (Henkens et al., 2022; Frankenberg et al., 2013). In most countries, immigrant adolescents lag behind their native peers in various aspects that shape well-being, such as higher anxiety and lower academic performance, sense of belonging, and peer acceptance (OECD, 2018). Some studies have directly related these immigrant disadvantages to explaining the SWB gap between immigrants and natives across countries. These studies, focused on micro- or meso-level factors, offered partial explanations for the gap by demonstrating the relevance of various sets of indicators, such as family affluence (Stevens et al.,

1 We use the term immigrant and foreign-born interchangeably as in our analysis, immigration status is based on country of birth. Anyone born in a country different from where they reside is deemed an immigrant.

3 2015); support from parents, school, and peers (Delaruelle et al., 2021); school-related experiences like bullying and anxiety, as well as home behaviours including talking to parents after school, eating breakfast, and exercising (Tang, 2018); and broader demographic and socio-economic factors including gender, language use at home, fear of failure, grade repetition, family wealth, and parents’ socio-economic status (Wang, 2021). Cross-national research has not yet explicitly examined what macro-level conditions of host countries explain cross-national variation in the immigrant–native SWB gap, for either adolescents or adults, despite evidence that the macro-environment is associated with immigrants’ well-being (Hendriks & Bartram, 2016; Kogan et al., 2018). Indeed, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (1979) conceptualizes adolescent development as shaped by nested systems of influence, ranging from immediate microsystems such as family, peers, and schools, to mesosystems (i.e., the interconnections among microsystems, such as how