Family and Childhood Experiences Affect Adult Wellbeing: New Free Discussion Paper

This is the GLO Discussion Paper of the month March 2018:

Flèche, Sarah & Lekfuangfu, Warn N. & Clark, Andrew E. , The Long-Lasting Effects of Family and Childhood on Adult Wellbeing: Evidence from British Cohort Data, GLO Discussion Paper, No. 184, March 2018. Free download.

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Abstract: To what extent do childhood experiences continue to affect adult wellbeing over the life course? Previous work on this link has been carried out either at one particular adult age or for some average over adulthood. We here use two British birth-cohort datasets (the 1958 NCDS and the 1970 BCS) to map out the time profile of the effect of childhood experiences on adult outcomes, including life satisfaction. We find that the effects of many aspects of childhood do not fade away over time but are rather remarkably stable. In both birth-cohorts, child non-cognitive skills are the strongest predictors of adult life satisfaction at all ages. Of these, emotional health is the strongest. Childhood cognitive performance is more important than good conduct in explaining adult life satisfaction in the earlier NCDS cohort, whereas this ranking is inverted in the more recent BCS.

This is the GLO Discussion Paper of the month March 2018 written by GLO Fellow Andrew E. Clark, one of the star writers in the wellbeing literature, and co-authors.

GLO Discussion Papers are research and policy papers of the GLO Network which are widely circulated to encourage discussion. Provided in cooperation with EconStor, a service of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, GLO Discussion Papers are among others listed in RePEc (see IDEAS, EconPapers). Complete list of all GLO DPs downloadable for free.