Do Rich Parents Enjoy Children Less?

Marco Le Moglie, Letizia Mencarini () and Chiara Rapallini

Working Papers - Economics from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa

Abstract: We investigate the role of individual labor income as a moderator of parental subjective well-being trajectories before and after the first childbirth in Germany, a very low fertility country. Analyzing German Socioeconomic Panel Survey data, we found that income matters negatively for parental subjective well-being after childbirth, though with important differences by education and gender. In particular, among better educated parents, the richer see the arrival of a child more negatively. These findings contribute to the debate on the relationship between income and fertility adding information on how parents perceive the birth of a child beyond the strict financial cost of childbearing and raising. Results are discussed in terms of preferences among different groups of parents, costs of children, and work and family balance. Results are robust to potential endogeneity between income and childbirth, as well as for alternative measures of income.

Keywords: First child; subjective well-being; individual income; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 I31 J1 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-eur, nep-hap and nep-lab
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Related works:
Working Paper: Do Rich Parents Enjoy Children Less? (2018)
Working Paper: Do rich parents enjoy children less? (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2017_08.rdf

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