Publication Type
Journal Article
Book Title/Conference/Journal
Journal of Sociology
Year
3-2026
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.
Keywords
COVID-19, emerging adulthood, entanglement, inequalities, Singapore, well-being
Disciplines
Asian Studies | Family, Life Course, and Society | Public Health
Subject(s)
Applied or Integration/Application Scholarship
ISSN/ISBN
1440-7833
Publisher
SAGE Publications
DOI
10.1177/14407833251382691
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833251382691
Version
acceptedVersion
Language
eng
Copyright Holder
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Format
application/PDF
Citation
CHUA, Vincent; CHEW, Han Ei; TAN, Isabelle; and LEE, Pamela.
Entangled transitions: How COVID-19 widened well-being gaps among youth in Singapore (2017–2022). (2026). Journal of Sociology. 62, (1), 137.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/oi_research/1