Who thrives, who struggles? Intersectional patterns of social-emotional health in adolescence

Social-emotional health is a key developmental resource linked to academic success, positive interpersonal relationships, and well-being. Most school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs assume these skills develop in similar ways for all students. This study examined whether youth reports of domains of social-emotional health—belief in self, belief in others, emotional competence, and engaged living—may differ across intersections of social identities or positions. Data came from 54,869 adolescents attending California secondary schools who completed a statewide survey. We used Multilevel Analysis of Individual Heterogeneity and Discriminatory Accuracy (MAIHDA) to estimate individual and intersectional-strata variance across combinations of gender identity, gender modality, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), and grade, and to derive predicted means for each stratum. Discriminatory accuracy indices indicated that intersectional strata explained additional between-person variability in social-emotional health beyond main effects. Predicted means showed a consistent pattern across all four domains: male/female heterosexual youth from higher SES backgrounds reported the highest levels of social-emotional health, whereas sexual minority, transgender and nonbinary students, and Hispanic/Latino/a students from medium-SES backgrounds showed systematically lower scores. The findings suggest that social-emotional health reflects the unequal conditions under which adolescents live and learn. Tracking how SEL outcomes differ across these groups of students may be needed to ensure that efforts to promote social-emotional development support all students, and do not reproduce existing inequities.