Suffer the little children: Measuring the effects of parenthood on well-being worldwide

Luca Stanca

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2012, vol. 81, issue 3, 742-750

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between parenthood and well-being in a large sample of individuals from 94 countries worldwide. We find that having children is negatively related to well-being. Conditioning on economic and socio-demographic characteristics can only partially help to explain this finding. We show that the negative effect of parenthood on well-being is explained by a large adverse impact on financial satisfaction, that dominates the positive impact on non-financial satisfaction. The results are robust to the use of alternative empirical specifications and to the inclusion of the reported ideal number of children as a proxy variable to account for the endogeneity of parenthood decisions.

Keywords: Well-being; Fertility; Children; Decision-making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 D10 D61 I31 J17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (62)

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Working Paper: Suffer the Little Children: Measuring the Effects of Parenthood on Well-Being Worldwide (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:81:y:2012:i:3:p:742-750

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2010.12.019

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