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Description: Despite the growing number and increased visibility of only-children (children raised without any siblings) in low-fertility societies, our social scientific understanding about this group has been surprisingly limited. Using data of 15-year old students in 31 countries from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000, we examine how family’s socioeconomic status and cognitive and non-cognitive performance outcomes of only-children vary across countries. Based on the literatures of sibling effects and demographic transition, we predict that the demographic context of individual countries matters for explaining cross-national differences in the only-child group. Our analysis supports this prediction in three aspects. First, only-children tend to have a higher family SES in countries where overall family size is small compared to countries with larger average family size. Second, only-children’s performance tends to be consistently better in countries where small families prevail. Third, such cross-country patterns in most non-social outcomes are largely explained by the cross-national variation in SES selectivity of only-children, but those in social outcomes are not, which suggests there could be different societal-level factors at work. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for comparative studies of intergenerational processes.