Entangled Transitions: How COVID-19 Widened Well-Being Gaps Among Youth in Singapore (2017–2022)

Abstract

COVID-19 was not merely a biomedical crisis but a deeply social phenomenon entangled with existing inequalities. Drawing on Peter Kelly's notion of entanglement, we conceptualise the pandemic as an intersectional crisis − where time, structural disadvantage and socio-emotional well-being became interwoven. Using six waves of longitudinal data (2017–2022) from Youth STEPS, a panel study of young people in Singapore, we track within-person changes in life satisfaction across key youth transitions before, during and after the pandemic. Our findings show that the negative effects of unemployment and insecure work on well-being were markedly more severe during the pandemic than in earlier years. Rather than merely revealing inequality, COVID-19 intensified it, with youth facing lower education levels and precarious employment most adversely affected. The pandemic thus acted as a catalyst of unequal disruption − reshaping youth life courses and exacerbating well-being disparities through its entanglement with enduring social and economic structures.