Growing up happy: Longitudinal relations between children’s happiness and their social and academic functioning

Happiness is valued as one of the most important goals in raising children, but what factors make children happy? Inspired by philosophical conceptions of ‘eudaimonia’ in life, we investigated how children’s social and academic functioning, including prosocial behaviors, peer preference, and academic achievement, may be related to happiness, over and above desire satisfaction. Participants included 2,144 children (initial ages of 9 and 10 years) in China. Two waves of longitudinal data were collected from multiple sources including self-reports, peer evaluations, and school records. Cross-lagged panel analysis indicated that prosocial behaviors, peer preference, and academic achievement predicted children’s self-reported happiness over a year, controlling for desire satisfaction. Bidirectional relations were found between peer-assessed happiness and prosocial behaviors, peer preference, and academic achievement. The results suggest that children’s happiness is linked to their social and academic functioning from middle childhood, contributing to a better understanding of the nature and development of happiness.