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Happiness Index

I came across this paper which was linked from an article I was reading. The topic piqued my interest and I went past the text to the graph which shows clearly that if you are a liberal teen then irrespective of gender you are more depressed than your progressive counterparts. There was a lot to read there but some things stood out for me: 

Among liberals, female adolescents without a parent with a college degree reported the highest average depressive affect scores, increasing from 2.02 (SD ​= ​0.81) in 2010 to 2.75 (SD ​= ​0.92) in 2018. 

That makes for quite the combination - female, teen, liberal and parent without a college degree.  Taking a very textbook notion of what a liberal is - desiring equality in society, respect for the individual no matter what defines the individual, seeking freedom and access to due process. In the context of this young woman, the prototypical depressed liberal teen, most of what she values is not a given in society and can feel rather unattainable. 

She is not an equal socio-economically most likely if the parent does not have a college degree. Her identity is meshed with status and she can feel lack of respect. Freedom can be sought but prove hard to attain by way of college education because paying for it may be an unsurmountable challenge. Access to due process is sometimes a result of having privilege this archetypical woman does not have. Maybe having a mindset that is not supportable by the person's circumstances is a driver of depression in this case. 

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