IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dem/wpaper/wp-2010-025.html

A global perspective on happiness and fertility

Author

Listed:
  • Rachel Margolis
  • Mikko Myrskylä

    (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany)

Abstract

The literature on fertility and happiness has neglected comparative analysis. We investigate the fertility-happiness association using data for 86 countries. We find that globally, happiness decreases with the number of children. This association, however, is strongly modified by individual and contextual factors. Most importantly, we find that the association between happiness and fertility evolves from negative to neutral to positive above age 40, and is strongest among those who are likely to benefit most from upward intergenerational transfers. In addition, analyses by welfare regime show that the negative fertility-happiness association for younger adults is weakest in countries with high public support for families, and the positive association above age 40 is strongest in countries where old-age support depends mostly on the family. Overall these results suggest that children are a long-term investment in well-being, and highlight the importance of the life-cycle stage and contextual factors in explaining the happiness-fertility association.

Suggested Citation

  • Rachel Margolis & Mikko Myrskylä, 2010. "A global perspective on happiness and fertility," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2010-025, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2010-025
    DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2010-025
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2010-025.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2010-025?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. Angus Deaton, 2008. "Income, Health, and Well-Being around the World: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 53-72, Spring.
    2. Easterlin, Richard A., 1995. "Will raising the incomes of all increase the happiness of all?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 35-47, June.
    3. Michael Lechner, 2001. "The Empirical Analysis of East German Fertility after Unification: An Update," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 61-73, March.
    4. Debra Friedman & Michael Hechter & Satoshi Kanazawa, 1994. "A theory of the value of children," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 31(3), pages 375-401, August.
    5. repec:wbk:wbpubs:28241 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. repec:wbk:wbpubs:11855 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Hans‐Peter Kohler & Francesco C. Billari & José Antonio Ortega, 2002. "The Emergence of Lowest‐Low Fertility in Europe During the 1990s," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 28(4), pages 641-680, December.
    8. Thomas Hansen & Britt Slagsvold & Torbjørn Moum, 2009. "Childlessness and Psychological Well-Being in Midlife and Old Age: An Examination of Parental Status Effects Across a Range of Outcomes," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 94(2), pages 343-362, November.
    9. Vani Borooah, 2006. "How much happiness is there in the world? A cross-country study," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(8), pages 483-488.
    10. Anke C. Zimmermann & Richard A. Easterlin, 2006. "Happily Ever After? Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Happiness in Germany," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 32(3), pages 511-528, September.
    11. repec:wbk:wbpubs:4373 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Ambrey, Christopher L. & Fleming, Christopher M., 2011. "Valuing Ecosystem Diversity in South East Queensland: A Life Satisfaction Approach," 2011 Conference, August 25-26, 2011, Nelson, New Zealand 115347, New Zealand Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    2. Christopher Ambrey & Christopher Fleming & Matthew Manning, 2014. "Perception or Reality, What Matters Most When it Comes to Crime in Your Neighbourhood?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 119(2), pages 877-896, November.
    3. Thomas Hansen, 2012. "Parenthood and Happiness: a Review of Folk Theories Versus Empirical Evidence," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 108(1), pages 29-64, August.
    4. Christopher Ambrey & Christopher Fleming, 2014. "Public Greenspace and Life Satisfaction in Urban Australia," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(6), pages 1290-1321, May.
    5. Milovanska-Farrington, Stefani & Farrington, Stephen, 2021. "More and none? Children and parental well-being: A bimodal outcome from an instrumental variable approach," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 225-243.
    6. Arnstein Aassve & Alice Goisis & Maria Sironi, 2012. "Happiness and Childbearing Across Europe," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 108(1), pages 65-86, August.
    7. Anna Baranowska & Anna Matysiak, 2011. "Does parenthood increase happiness? Evidence for Poland," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 9(1), pages 307-325.
    8. Stephan Humpert, 2010. "A Note on Happiness in Eastern Europe," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(3), pages 133-144.
    9. Martin Werding, 2014. "Children are costly, but raising them may pay," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 30(8), pages 253-276.
    10. Ambrey, Christopher L. & Fleming, Christopher M., 2011. "Valuing scenic amenity using life satisfaction data," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 106-115.
    11. Ambrey, Christopher L. & Fleming, Christopher M., 2011. "The influence of the natural environment and climate on life satisfaction in Australia," 2011 Conference (55th), February 8-11, 2011, Melbourne, Australia 100548, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.

    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. David G. Blanchflower, 2009. "International Evidence on Well-Being," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring the Subjective Well-Being of Nations: National Accounts of Time Use and Well-Being, pages 155-226, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Proto, Eugenio & Rustichini, Aldo, "undated". "Life Satisfaction, Household Income and Personality Traits," Economic Research Papers 270640, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    3. J. Silvestre, & T. Araújo & M. St. Aubyn, 2016. "Economic growth and individual satisfaction in an agent-based economy," Working Papers Department of Economics 2016/19, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    4. Sunnee Billingsley, 2010. "The Post-Communist Fertility Puzzle," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 29(2), pages 193-231, April.
    5. Wolfers, Justin & Stevenson, Betsey & Sacks, Dan, 2010. "Subjective Well-Being, Income, Economic Development and Growth," CEPR Discussion Papers 8048, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    6. Easterlin, Richard A. & Angelescu McVey, Laura & Switek, Maggie & Sawangfa, Onnicha & Zweig, Jacqueline Smith, 2011. "The Happiness-Income Paradox Revisited," IZA Discussion Papers 5799, IZA Network @ LISER.
    7. Burhan, Nik Ahmad Sufian & Mohamad, Mohd Rosli & Kurniawan, Yohan & Sidek, Abdul Halim, 2014. "National Intelligence, Basic Human Needs, and Their Effect on Economic Growth," MPRA Paper 77267, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Thaís García-Pereiro & Anna Paterno, 2025. "Nonnationals’ Fertility and the Great Recession in Italy: A Panel Analysis of Quantum and Tempo Responses," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 11(1), pages 175-209, March.
    9. Easterlin, Richard A. & Angelescu McVey, Laura, 2009. "Happiness and Growth the World Over: Time Series Evidence on the Happiness-Income Paradox," IZA Discussion Papers 4060, IZA Network @ LISER.
    10. Kapteyn, Arie & Smith, James P. & van Soest, Arthur, 2009. "Life Satisfaction," IZA Discussion Papers 4015, IZA Network @ LISER.
    11. Arie Kapteyn & James P. Smith & Arthur Van Soest, 2009. "Comparing Life Satisfaction," Working Papers WR-623-1, RAND Corporation.
    12. Sergei Guriev & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2009. "(Un)happiness in Transition," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(2), pages 143-168, Spring.
    13. BARTOLINI Stefano & SARRACINO Francesco, 2011. "Happy for How Long? How Social Capital and GDP relate to Happiness over Time," LISER Working Paper Series 2011-60, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    14. Tufan Ekici & Selda Koydemir, 2016. "Income Expectations and Happiness: Evidence from British Panel Data," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 11(2), pages 539-552, June.
    15. Pillai N., Vijayamohanan & B. P., Asalatha, 2013. "Objectivizing the Subjective: Measuring Subjective Wellbeing," MPRA Paper 45005, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Andrew E. Clark & Claudia Senik, 2010. "Will GDP growth increase happiness in developing countries?," PSE Working Papers halshs-00564985, HAL.
    17. Beja Jr, Edsel, 2013. "Does economic prosperity bring about a happier society? Mathematical remarks on the Easterlin Paradox debate," MPRA Paper 48229, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Rachel Margolis & Mikko Myrskylä, 2012. "Family, money, and health: regional differences in the determinants of life cycle life satisfaction," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2012-012, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    19. Kubiszewski, Ida & Costanza, Robert & Franco, Carol & Lawn, Philip & Talberth, John & Jackson, Tim & Aylmer, Camille, 2013. "Beyond GDP: Measuring and achieving global genuine progress," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 57-68.
    20. Nestor Gandelman & Ruben Hernandez-Murillo, 2009. "The impact of inflation and unemployment on subjective personal and country evaluations," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 91(May), pages 107-126.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    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:dem:wpaper:wp-2010-025. 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: Peter Wilhelm (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/ .

    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.