Demographic Variation in Balance in Life Across 22 Countries: A Cross-National Analysis of the Global Flourishing Study

Abstract The importance of balance has been selectively acknowledged in modern scholarship through notions such as work-life balance. However, the broader notion of balance in life has remained underappreciated. This may reflect the Western-centric nature of academia, with balance having received less attention in the West compared to other cultures. But aligning with efforts to make scholarship more globally inclusive, an emergent literature is exploring this concept. This report adds to this by presenting data from the most ambitious longitudinal study to date of life balance, as an item – “In general, how often are the various aspects of your life in balance?” – in the Global Flourishing Study, a five-year (minimum) panel study investigating the predictors of flourishing involving (in this first year) 202,898 participants from 22 countries. Reporting on wave 1 of the study, this paper looks at demographic variation vis-à-vis life balance, with our primary analyses consisting of meta-analyses across countries for each demographic group, focusing on three research questions. First, what are the distributions and descriptive statistics of key demographic factors. Second, how do levels of balance order across countries, with considerable variation observed, with the percentage either always or often in balance ranging from 83% in Israel to just 44% in Tanzania. Third, how does balance vary across demographic categories, with the biggest difference in relation to employment status (with 76% of retirees often or always in balance, versus 57% of those unemployed/seeking a job), and the smallest in relation to immigration status. These results shed new light on the personal and contextual factors that shape this valued outcome, and provide the foundation for further enquiry.