Does higher education shape change in happiness during the COVID-19 pandemic? Evidence from working-age adults in China.

IF 3.8 3区心理学 Q2 PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Frontiers in Psychology Pub Date : 2026-10-05 eCollection Date: 2026-01-01 DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1843236

Huijiang Dai

{"title":"Does higher education shape change in happiness during the COVID-19 pandemic? Evidence from working-age adults in China.","authors":"Huijiang Dai","doi":"10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1843236","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic had profound consequences for subjective well-being. Yet these consequences may have varied by educational attainment. This study aims to investigate whether patterns of happiness change during the COVID-19 pandemic differed between working-age adults with and without higher education. Using nationally representative panel data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) and focusing on the 2018 and 2020 waves (N = 13,203), this research employs a difference-in-differences design to compare changes in self-reported happiness between individuals with and without higher education. By centering higher education as a key stratifying factor, this study extends the higher education literature on how large-scale crises affect happiness. The findings reveal that individuals with higher education experienced a significantly less pronounced decline in self-reported happiness (β = 0.186, p = 0.003) during the public health crisis, and this apparent higher-education advantage in pandemic-related happiness is highly conditional on socioeconomic and psychosocial circumstances. The results underscore the need for policymakers to address educational disparities when developing mental health and social support strategies for future large-scale crises.","PeriodicalId":12525,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Psychology","volume":"17 ","pages":"1843236"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8000,"publicationDate":"2026-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13677464/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Frontiers in Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1843236","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2026/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had profound consequences for subjective well-being. Yet these consequences may have varied by educational attainment. This study aims to investigate whether patterns of happiness change during the COVID-19 pandemic differed between working-age adults with and without higher education. Using nationally representative panel data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) and focusing on the 2018 and 2020 waves (N = 13,203), this research employs a difference-in-differences design to compare changes in self-reported happiness between individuals with and without higher education. By centering higher education as a key stratifying factor, this study extends the higher education literature on how large-scale crises affect happiness. The findings reveal that individuals with higher education experienced a significantly less pronounced decline in self-reported happiness (β = 0.186, p = 0.003) during the public health crisis, and this apparent higher-education advantage in pandemic-related happiness is highly conditional on socioeconomic and psychosocial circumstances. The results underscore the need for policymakers to address educational disparities when developing mental health and social support strategies for future large-scale crises.

查看原文本刊更多论文

在2019冠状病毒病大流行期间，高等教育是否影响了幸福感的变化？来自中国工作年龄成年人的证据。

2019冠状病毒病大流行对主观幸福感产生了深远影响。然而，这些后果可能因受教育程度而异。这项研究旨在调查在COVID-19大流行期间，受过高等教育和没有受过高等教育的工作年龄成年人的幸福模式是否有所不同。本研究使用来自中国家庭小组研究（CFPS）的具有全国代表性的小组数据，重点关注2018年和2020年的浪潮（N = 13,203），采用差异中的差异设计来比较受过高等教育和没有受过高等教育的个人自我报告的幸福感变化。本研究将高等教育作为一个关键的分层因素，扩展了高等教育文献对大规模危机如何影响幸福感的研究。研究结果显示，在公共卫生危机期间，受过高等教育的个体在自我报告的幸福感下降方面明显不那么明显（β = 0.186,p = 0.003），这种明显的高等教育优势与流行病相关的幸福感在很大程度上取决于社会经济和社会心理环境。研究结果强调，决策者在为未来大规模危机制定心理健康和社会支持战略时，需要解决教育差异问题。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Frontiers in Psychology PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-

CiteScore

5.30

自引率

13.20%

发文量

7396

审稿时长

14 weeks

期刊介绍： Frontiers in Psychology is the largest journal in its field, publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research across the psychological sciences, from clinical research to cognitive science, from perception to consciousness, from imaging studies to human factors, and from animal cognition to social psychology. Field Chief Editor Axel Cleeremans at the Free University of Brussels is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international researchers. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and impactful discoveries to researchers, academics, clinicians and the public worldwide. The journal publishes the best research across the entire field of psychology. Today, psychological science is becoming increasingly important at all levels of society, from the treatment of clinical disorders to our basic understanding of how the mind works. It is highly interdisciplinary, borrowing questions from philosophy, methods from neuroscience and insights from clinical practice - all in the goal of furthering our grasp of human nature and society, as well as our ability to develop new intervention methods.