Favorable socioeconomic environment in childhood appears to have a positive effect on offspring’s compassion in their middle adulthood; this effect may attenuate by middle age

Saarinen AI, Keltner D, Dobewall H, Lehtimäki T, Keltikangas-Järvinen L, Hintsanen M (2021) The relationship of socioeconomic status in childhood and adulthood with compassion: A study with a prospective 32-year follow-up. PLoS ONE 16(3): e0248226, Mar24 2021. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248226

Abstract: The objective of this study was to investigate (i) whether childhood family SES predicts offspring’s compassion between ages 20–50 years and (ii) whether adulthood SES predicts compassion or vice versa. We used the prospective population-based Young Finns data (N = 637–2300). Childhood family SES was evaluated in 1980; participants’ adulthood SES in 2001 and 2011; and compassion for others in 1997, 2001, and 2012. Compassion for others was evaluated with the Compassion scale of the Temperament and Character Inventory. The results showed that high childhood family SES (a composite score of educational level, occupational status, unemployment status, and level of income) predicted offspring’s higher compassion between ages 30–40 years but not in early adulthood or middle age. These results were obtained independently of a variety of potential confounders (disruptive behavior in childhood; parental mental disorder; frequency of parental alcohol use and alcohol intoxication). Moreover, high compassion for others in adulthood (a composite score of educational level, occupational status, and unemployment status) predicted higher adulthood SES later in their life (after a 10-year follow-up), but not vice versa. In conclusion, favorable socioeconomic environment in childhood appears to have a positive effect on offspring’s compassion in their middle adulthood. This effect may attenuate by middle age. High compassion for others seems to promote the achievement of higher SES in adulthood.

4 Discussion

This study showed that high childhood family SES predicts offspring’s higher compassion in middle adulthood (approximately at the age of 30–40 years), but not in early adulthood or middle age. Hence, living in economically advantaged circumstances seemed to have a positive influence on one’s disposition to feel compassion for others in adulthood. Moreover, we found that high compassion in adulthood predicted higher adulthood SES, but not vice versa.

The positive relationship of childhood family SES with offspring’s compassion is in line with previous literature. Previous studies suggest that high childhood family SES is strongly linked to favorable psychosocial qualities of home environment that may promote compassion development. Specifically, high family SES is proposed to be linked to lower parental stress levels [12, 14], higher maternal support for the offspring [12, 14], higher quality of the parent-child communication [16], and better family climate [12]. High quality of the parent-child relationship, in turn, predicts offspring’s higher compassion in adulthood [39].

Importantly, the influence of childhood family SES on offspring’s compassion was not significant in early adulthood (approximately ages of 20–25 years) or in middle age (approximately ages of 45–50 years). This study did not investigate potential mechanisms between SES and compassion but there may be some potential explanations. Firstly, it may be that compassion-related qualities need to be a comparatively stable feature of one’s identity, before one is able to conduct prosocial actions toward outgroup-individuals and to forgive for others who have behaved aggressively [40]. In order to form a stable identity, one needs to mentally go through the past events in childhood and adolescence, including parenting practices and childhood family circumstances. Previously, the age of 30 years is found to be a critical age period for personality traits to become more stabilized [41]. We speculate that this may potentially provide one explanation why parental SES predicted compassion beginning at the age of 30 years. Secondly, compassion increased over age in all the SES groups. Hence, in middle age, there may have not been enough variance in compassion to obtain statistically significant differences between SES groups. Thirdly, there were fewer participants in extreme age ranges that may likely resulted in broader confidence intervals and weaker statistical significance of the associations.

The results showed that high compassion predicts higher SES in adulthood. This may be explained by the motivational component of compassion leading to higher willingness to prosocial behavior [3] that, in turn, is related to higher social connectedness [42]. Further, experiencing compassion is related to more frequent actions to promote common goals in one’s social communities [43]. These social benefits of compassion may promote compassionate individuals’ higher status at occupational environments. In addition, compassion may protect against work stress and burnout because high compassion is related to better coping with stress [44, 45] and more favorable health behavior [46].

Previous studies have suggested that high adulthood SES is related to weaker compassion-related qualities, such as lower ability to recognize others’ emotional states [19] and less frequent altruistic and helpful behavior toward others [20, 21]. Those studies, however, did not control for childhood family SES. In this study, we took into account childhood family SES and obtained no association between offspring’s adulthood SES and compassion.

The current study had some methodological limitations that are necessary to be taken into consideration. In Finland, there is a comprehensive social welfare system with quite a strong progressive taxation. Further, unemployed individuals are typically provided with satisfactory unemployment benefits. Additionally, there is a 9-year-long comprehensive school for the whole age group, so that all the citizens may likely have basic educational knowledge. Hence, even “low SES” may likely refer to satisfactory levels of socioeconomic circumstances (i.e. having apartment, food, and health care) and, conversely, there are very few individuals with extreme wealth in Finland. Consequently, our results cannot be generalized to populations with extremely low and high levels of SES where the link between compassion and SES might be different. In addition, there may be possible cultural differences in the SES-compassion relationships that may restrict the generalizability of our findings and that could be addressed in up-coming studies. Overall, our findings suggest that even comparatively small increases in childhood family SES (within a reasonable SES range) have a beneficial influence on offspring’s compassion in adulthood.

This study had also a variety of strengths. Firstly, to our knowledge, this study was the first to investigate the relationship of childhood family SES with compassion over a long-term prospective follow-up (32 years) into adulthood. Further, we investigated the relationship between adulthood SES and compassion over an 11-year follow-up. Secondly, we could take into consideration a variety of other covariates (child’s disruptive behavior, parental mental disorder, parents’ frequency of alcohol use and intoxication). Thirdly, we used SES composite scores consisting of several SES indicators (level of income, occupational status, educational level, employment status), in order to capture the multidimensional aspects of socioeconomic circumstances. Fourthly, we had a large population-based sample with intergenerational design and three respondents from each family (mother, father, and child). Finally, as academic-level education is provided free-or-charge for the Finnish citizens, childhood family SES may not largely determine offspring’s SES development. Hence, the effects of one’s own characteristics (such as compassion) on later SES development can be more clearly observed in our Finnish sample than in some other countries.

Commonly, unemployment or other socioeconomic troubles are treated using public employment services such as vocational training [47]. There is evidence, however, that compassion may have favorable influences on socioeconomic status: for example, compassionate practices at work place are found to predict higher work engagement and to protect against burnout in stressful circumstances over a 6-month follow-up [48]. Our study showed that compassion is related to higher socioeconomic status over an 11-year follow-up. Further, there is evidence that compassion may be enhanced even with a few-week-long compassion intervention [49], including practices to e.g. increase tolerance to other’s suffering and to shift attention from self-monitoring to recognizing others’ emotional states [50]. Finally, there is evidence that women coming from low-SES childhood families may not be willing to contact health-care professionals and must be contacted even ten times in order to get them to participate in psychotherapy [51]. Our study suggests that individuals with low childhood SES may have a lower level of compassion that, in turn, may potentially be manifested as a distrust toward health-care professionals. Consequently, individuals coming from socioeconomically harsh environments could be treated with particular warmth and trust, as has been suggested also previously [52].