IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/xtfq6.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Childlessness, parenthood and subjective wellbeing: The relevance of conceptualizing parenthood and childlessness as a continuum

Author

Listed:
  • Albertini, Marco
  • Arpino, Bruno

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to show the theoretical and practical relevance of conceptualizing and operationalizing parenthood and childlessness as a continuum – instead of a dichotomy - when evaluating the consequences of kinless-ness in later life. It is suggested that information on the number of children, structural and associational intergenerational solidarity can be utilized to operationalize the continuum. Subjective wellbeing is utilized as outcome of interest. Data from waves 2, 4, 5 and 6 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe are used. The sample includes 183,545 respondents from 21 countries. Linear regression models with clustered standard errors are used. Childless older individuals report lower levels of life satisfaction than parents. However, the largest difference is observed between those with one and two children. Using a measure of associational intergenerational solidarity to weight the degree of parenthood it is shown that parents who have infrequent contact with children report significantly lower levels of life satisfaction than childless individuals. Kinless-ness is not only a demographic but also a social condition. When studying the consequences of ageing alone it is essential to consider not only the presence and “quantity” of kin, but also its “quality”.

Suggested Citation

  • Albertini, Marco & Arpino, Bruno, 2018. "Childlessness, parenthood and subjective wellbeing: The relevance of conceptualizing parenthood and childlessness as a continuum," SocArXiv xtfq6, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:xtfq6
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/xtfq6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/5bc9d96e6a9364001a6c1744/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/xtfq6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicoletta Balbo & Bruno Arpino, 2016. "The Role of Family Orientations in Shaping the Effect of Fertility on Subjective Well-being: A Propensity Score Matching Approach," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 53(4), pages 955-978, August.
    2. Rachel Margolis & Ashton M. Verdery, 2017. "Older Adults Without Close Kin in the United States," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 72(4), pages 688-693.
    3. Tsang, Eric W. K., 2014. "Old and New," Management and Organization Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(03), pages 390-390, November.
    4. Arnstein Aassve & Bruno Arpino & Nicoletta Balbo, 2016. "It Takes Two to Tango: Couples’ Happiness and Childbearing," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 32(3), pages 339-354, August.
    5. Zhenmei Zhang & Mark D. Hayward, 2001. "Childlessness and the Psychological Well-Being of Older Persons," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 56(5), pages 311-320.
    6. David Reher & Miguel Requena, 2017. "Elderly women living alone in Spain: the importance of having children," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 311-322, September.
    7. Sheung-Tak Cheng & Trista Wai Sze Chan & Geoff H. K. Li & Edward M. F. Leung, 2014. "Childlessness and Subjective Well-being in Chinese Widowed Persons," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 69(1), pages 48-52.
    8. Romina Boarini & Margherita Comola & Conal Smith & Robert Manchin & Femke de Keulenaer, 2012. "What Makes for a Better Life?: The Determinants of Subjective Well-Being in OECD Countries – Evidence from the Gallup World Poll," OECD Statistics Working Papers 2012/3, OECD Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aurea Grané & Irene Albarrán & Roger Lumley, 2020. "Visualizing Inequality in Health and Socioeconomic Wellbeing in the EU: Findings from the SHARE Survey," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(21), pages 1-18, October.
    2. Elitsa Dimitrova & Tatyana Kotzeva, 2022. "Contested Parenthood: Attitudes Toward Voluntary Childlessness as a Life Strategy in Post‐Socialist Bulgaria," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(3), pages 172-183.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bruno Arpino & Jordi Gumà & Albert JuliÃ, 2021. "Deviations From Standard Family Histories and Subjective Wellbeing at Older Ages," Econometrics Working Papers Archive 2021_16, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti".
    2. Márta K. Radó, 2020. "Tracking the Effects of Parenthood on Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Hungary," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(6), pages 2069-2094, August.
    3. Daniela Bellani & Bruno Arpino & Daniele Vignoli, 2021. "Time preferences and fertility: Evidence from Italy," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 44(50), pages 1185-1228.
    4. Ali Shalizar Jalali, 2018. "Male Fertility as a Bull’s Eye for Mastocytosis," Global Journal of Reproductive Medicine, Juniper Publishers Inc., vol. 3(3), pages 58-60, February.
    5. Nikolov, Plamen & Adelman, Alan, 2019. "Do private household transfers to the elderly respond to public pension benefits? Evidence from rural China," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 14(C).
    6. Dana Benešová & Viera Kubičková & Miroslava Prváková, 2020. "Open innovation model in the knowledge intensive business services in the Slovak Republic," Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, VsI Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center, vol. 8(2), pages 1340-1358, December.
    7. Selman, P., 2014. "Intercountry Adoption Agencies and the HCIA," ISS Working Papers - General Series 77404, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS), The Hague.
    8. Martinho, Vítor João Pereira Domingues, 2019. "Historical records of wine: Highlighting the old wine world," EconStor Preprints 193461, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    9. Trine Filges & Anu Siren & Torben Fridberg & Bjørn C. V. Nielsen, 2020. "Voluntary work for the physical and mental health of older volunteers: A systematic review," Campbell Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(4), December.
    10. Alexandru-Ionuţ Petrişor & Walid Hamma & Huu Duy Nguyen & Giovanni Randazzo & Anselme Muzirafuti & Mari-Isabella Stan & Van Truong Tran & Roxana Aştefănoaiei & Quang-Thanh Bui & Dragoş-Florian Vintilă, 2020. "Degradation of Coastlines under the Pressure of Urbanization and Tourism: Evidence on the Change of Land Systems from Europe, Asia and Africa," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(8), pages 1-43, August.
    11. repec:ers:journl:v:special_issue:y:2018:i:1:p:466-478 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Sellami Sana & Verhaest Dieter & Nonneman Walter & Van Trier Walter, 2017. "The Impact of Educational Mismatches on Wages: The Influence of Measurement Error and Unobserved Heterogeneity," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-20, February.
    13. Kenneth M. Johnson & Daniel T. Lichter, 2016. "Diverging Demography: Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Contributions to U.S. Population Redistribution and Diversity," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 35(5), pages 705-725, October.
    14. Su, Guifu & Tu, Jianhua & Das, Kinkar Ch., 2015. "Graphs with fixed number of pendent vertices and minimal Zeroth-order general Randić index," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 270(C), pages 705-710.
    15. Zbigniew Drewniak & Rafal Drewniak & Robert Karaszewski, 2020. "The Assessment of the Features of Inter-organisational Relationships: Benefits, Duration, Repeatability and Maturity of the Relationship with the Company's Stakeholders," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(Special 1), pages 443-461.
    16. Tanja Lepistö & Tiina Mäkitalo-Keinonen & Tiina Valjakka, 0. "Opportunity recognition in a hub-governed network – insights from garage services," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-24.
    17. Sierra, Jazmin & Hochstetler, Kathryn, 2017. "Transnational activist networks and rising powers: transparency and environmental concerns in the Brazilian National Development Bank," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 79089, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Carlo Borzaga & Silvia Sacchetti, 2015. "Why Social Enterprises Are Asking to Be Multi-stakeholder and Deliberative: An Explanation around the Costs of Exclusion," Euricse Working Papers 1575, Euricse (European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises).
    19. Mukhamedova, Nozilakhon & Wegerich, Kai, 2018. "The feminization of agriculture in post-Soviet Tajikistan," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 57, pages 128-139.
    20. Olivera, Javier & Andreoli, Francesco & Leist, Anja K. & Chauvel, Louis, 2018. "Inequality in old age cognition across the world," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 179-188.
    21. Guillermo Montt, 2017. "Field-of-study mismatch and overqualification: labour market correlates and their wage penalty," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-20, December.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:xtfq6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.