Subjective Well-being Across One Year of Living Through the COVID-19 Pandemic: A 3-Wave Longitudinal Study

People worldwide have been impacted by the COVID-19 global pandemic since March 2020, but it is unclear how people’s subjective well-being (SWB) has changed during this pandemic. Recent studies have reported both change and stability in SWB, but most of these studies have examined only short periods of time or were limited to only a few dimensions of SWB. Moreover, prior findings have been somewhat inconsistent. To address these issues, this study (N = 972) tracked five SWB indicators (i.e., life satisfaction, positive and negative emotions, depression, and anxiety) over three waves of data that covered about one year following the pandemic declaration. Using latent growth curve models, we found that SWB remained stable during the study period, and that there was great variability in people’s initial levels of SWB (about three months post-pandemic declaration). We did not find that different SWB indicators displayed different change patterns.