Association Between Family Meal Frequency and Social and Emotional Skills Among Chinese Adolescents: Evidence from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS)

Adolescents’ social development is shaped by everyday family interactions, yet evidence on whether routine family practices are associated with social and emotional skills remains limited, particularly in China. Using data from the 2016–2022 China Family Panel Studies, this study examined the association between family meal frequency and five CFPS-based proxy indicators of social and emotional skills among 3727 adolescent-wave observations from adolescents aged 10–16 years. Ordinary least squares models were estimated, with propensity score matching used as a robustness check and subgroup analyses supplemented by formal interaction tests by school stage, residence, and family socioeconomic status (SES). More frequent family meals were positively associated with the proxy indicators for agreeableness, extraversion, and emotional stability, while conscientiousness showed weaker but positive evidence of association; no significant association was found for openness. The subgroup and interaction analyses suggested some group-specific patterns, including tentative differences by school stage and somewhat broader positive associations among rural and low-SES adolescents, although the interaction evidence was limited. The findings suggest that regular family meals may represent a routine family interaction context modestly associated with selected proxy indicators of adolescents’ social and emotional skills.