Childhood predictors of balance in life: A cross-national analysis of the Global Flourishing Study

Although the importance of balance has been recognized in various specific domains, from work-life balance to a balanced diet, there has been curiously little attention to balance in life overall (i.e., across all aspects of living). As a result, there is relatively little understanding of its various dynamics, including childhood factors that may be associated with balance in adulthood. To gain a better understanding of such factors, we analysed cross-sectional wave 1 data on life balance in the Global Flourishing Study. This is a five-year (minimum) study investigating the predictors of human flourishing involving, in this first year, 202,898 participants from 22 countries, and which includes the item, “In general, how often are the various aspects of your life in balance?” Here we looked at 13 childhood predictors of balance, using random effects meta-analyses to aggregate all findings in the main text, focusing on three research questions. First, how do different aspects of a child's upbringing predict balance in adulthood?, for which the most impactful factor was “Feeling like an outsider growing up” (Risk Ratio = 0.90) and the least was immigration status (0.98). Second, do these associations vary by country?, with the effect of being an outsider, for example, strongest in Australia, and weakest (not different than zero) in Turkey, South Africa, Nigeria, Poland, Egypt, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Third, are the observed relationships robust to potential unmeasured confounding, as assessed by E-values, which overall was the case. These results shed new light on the cross-cultural and potential causal dynamics of this overlooked topic and provide the foundation for further enquiry.