Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review | DOI: 10.13060/csr.2026.018

Research Note: The Evolution of Life Satisfaction During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Czech Republic

Dana Hamplová ORCID..., Jan Klusáček ORCID...
Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague

The article explores the evolution of life satisfaction from 2015 to 2023 with a special focus on the period of the COVID pandemic. Data from the Czech Household Panel Survey show that the Czech population experienced a gradual increase in life satisfaction (LS) in the years before the pandemic. The onset of the pandemic in 2020 erased the gains in life satisfaction from previous years with no significant gender or age differences. However, the focus on the mean changes in satisfaction conceals the great heterogeneity of responses. In the first year of the pandemic, about one-third of respondents did not experience any changes, and one-quarter of respondents enjoyed an improvement in their LS compared to pre-pandemic levels. However, stability was rare and we observed high levels of volatility in response to the pandemic. Overall, descriptive statistics and mixture growth models revealed small differences across sociodemographic groups. Only education seemed to systematically predict the trajectories, as individuals with less than tertiary education experienced a more severe decline in the pandemic years.

Keywords: COVID pandemic, life satisfaction, wellbeing

Received: February 11, 2025; Revised: May 5, 2026; Accepted: May 5, 2026; Prepublished online: July 13, 2026 

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