What explains the well-being differences between immigrant and native adolescents? The role of host country characteristics across the world.

Immigrant adolescents generally report lower subjective well-being (SWB) than their native peers, representing an important dimension of inequality among adolescents – who are already vulnerable and facing a growing SWB-crisis in many countries. Yet, little is known about the country-level determinants of the immigrant-native gap in adolescent SWB. Using data for more than 750,000 15-year-old students across 42 countries from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015, 2018, and 2022 waves, we contribute, finding immigrant adolescents report, on average, 0.24 points lower life satisfaction (on a 0-10 scale) than their native peers. However, this gap varies widely across countries, from a positive 0.23 (where immigrants are more satisfied) to a negative 0.83. To explain the difference in gaps across countries, we show that they are systematically related to macro-level factors. Immigrant adolescents fare relatively worse than native adolescents in countries with: lower uncertainty avoidance (a cultural dimension), larger and more diverse immigrant populations, and weaker institutional quality. These findings highlight the importance of national contexts, especially culture, in shaping SWB inequalities between immigrant and native adolescents.

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