Prosocial behaviour and happiness among children aged 6 to 11 years in Canada

A gap in Canadian public health surveillance is the monitoring of childhood positive mental health (PMH). We used available data from the first six cycles of the Canadian Health Measures Survey to examine how two potential PMH indicators are distributed across time and populations of children aged 6 to 11 years. The prevalence of normative parent-rated prosocial behaviour and perceived happiness was high and relatively stable across time. Normative parent-rated prosocial behaviour was more common among females (vs. males) and 8- to 9-year-olds (vs. 6- to 7-year-olds), while perceived happiness was higher among 6- to 7-year-olds (vs. 10- to 11-year-olds).