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

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  • Stanca, Luca

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.

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  • Stanca, Luca, 2012. "Suffer the little children: Measuring the effects of parenthood on well-being worldwide," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(3), pages 742-750.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:81:y:2012:i:3:p:742-750
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2010.12.019
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Well-being; Fertility; Children; Decision-making;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • J17 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Value of Life; Foregone Income

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