Does the association between children and happiness vary by level of religiosity? The evidence from Israel

Jona Schellekens
Additional contact information
Jona Schellekens: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Demographic Research, 2019, vol. 41, issue 5, 103-124

Abstract: Background: There is a widespread belief that parenthood makes people happier. However, research has shown mixed results on the association between happiness and fertility, finding evidence for both positive and negative consequences of having children. The relationship appears to be highly context-specific. This article investigates whether the relationship varies by level of religiosity. Mounting evidence suggests that there is a positive relationship between religiosity and fertility, suggesting that the religious will have a stronger positive relationship between number of children and happiness than those who are not religious. Objective: This study investigates whether the relationship between number of children and overall life satisfaction varies with the level of religiosity. Methods: Using a pooled file of the Israel Social Survey for 2002–2016, which includes more than 100,000 respondents, I estimated a linear regression model of overall life satisfaction as a function of the number of children and level of religiosity. Results: My results show that, contrary to expectations, religious Jews do not have a stronger positive relationship between number of children and overall life satisfaction. Among older respondents, Ultra-Orthodox Jews actually have a weaker relationship between number of children and overall life satisfaction than Jews who are not religious. Contribution: To the best of my knowledge, this is the first study to show that the religious do not necessarily have a stronger positive relationship between number of children and happiness than those who are not religious.

Keywords: happiness; children; religiosity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol41/5/41-5.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:demres:v:41:y:2019:i:5

DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2019.41.5

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Demographic Research from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Editorial Office ().