Family Size and Subjective Well-Being in Europe: Do More Children Make Parents (Un)Happy?

Abstrakt

Using the European SILC data we show that having an additional child negatively affects well-being for parents of small children, while parents of teenagers report higher or unchanged levels of well-being when having an additional child. This is mainly driven by satisfaction with time allocation and by the frequency of feeling nervous.

Multiple births are used as the source of exogenous variation, the best strategy given the sample size and the context of low fertility countries. We conclude that more help directed towards parents of the youngest children and publicising the positive future effects of having large families could increase fertility.

Klíčová slova

• life satisfaction
• base-line
• happiness
• fertility
• policies
• birth
• twins
• quantity
• quality