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

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.

► We study the effect of parenthood on well-being worldwide. ► The main finding is that having children is negatively related to well-being. ► This result is explained by the impact of parenthood on financial satisfaction. ► This negative effect dominates the positive impact on non-financial satisfaction.