Life Course Insights into Social Relationship Quality: A Cross-National Analysis of 22 Countries

Research has demonstrated strong associations between social relationships and health and well-being, but considerably less is known about the upstream factors–specifically, the childhood antecedents–that contribute to the quality of one’s social relationships in adulthood. We use data from the first wave of the Global Flourishing Study, a diverse, global sample of 202,898 individuals across 22 countries, to evaluate an array of social and economic factors, adverse events and experiences, health status, and sociodemographic characteristics from childhood as potential predictors of adult social relationship quality. Using multivariate regression analysis, random effects meta-analysis results indicated that during childhood, having higher subjective financial status, better self-rated health, frequent religious service attendance, good relationships with mother and father, and being female and born in an earlier birth cohort were associated with better social relationship quality in adulthood. In contrast, experiencing abuse and feeling like an outsider in one’s family growing up were associated with lower social relationship quality. Country-specific analyses showed substantial between-country variations in these associations. Our findings provide an empirical foundation for further investigation into variability and mechanisms in associations between childhood factors and adult social relationship quality, and cultural differences in these patterns.