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How many children should you have?
From a private point of view, only one:
In comparing identical twins, Kohler found that mothers with one child are about 20 percent happier than their childless counterparts; and while fathers' happiness gains are smaller, men enjoy an almost 75 percent larger happiness boost from a firstborn son than from a firstborn daughter [TC: remember the result that fathers with sons are less likely to leave?]. The first child's sex doesn't matter to mothers, perhaps because women are better than men at enjoying the company of both girls and boys, Kohler speculates.
Interestingly, second and third children don't add to parents' happiness at all. In fact, these additional children seem to make mothers less happy than mothers with only one child—though still happier than women with no children.
"If you want to maximize your subjective well-being, you should stop at one child," concludes Kohler, adding that people probably have additional children either for the benefit of the firstborn or because they reason that if the first child made them happy, the second one will, too.
Here is the longer story. See this paper. Here is the researcher's home page.
I am hardly an expert in this area, but I find the logic appealing. One kid is quite able to fill your time and thoughts. I call this the "parent as empty vessel" model. The argument for more than one kid, in this view, would rest on risk-aversion and the chance that one kid might die or not work out so well.
Note the contrast between Kohler with Bryan Caplan's theory that you should have more kids now than you want, so you may enjoy them when you are old. At that point in time, no single kid "fills the empty vessel" and so more of them are needed.
I believe that men enjoy children more than women do, as they are less stressed by worry. Whether men want children more is a different question [this last sentence has been altered from a previous version.]
The pointer is from the still totally awesome www.politicaltheory.info.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 18, 2007 at 07:31 AM in Science | Permalink
Comments
What if the maximizing number is 0.7? I mean, maybe the relevant choice variable is not the number of kids per se, but how many hours do I want spend with them. I can have one kid but send him/her to the nursery and to grandma's home for 0.3 of the day.
Posted by: L Monasterio at Apr 18, 2007 8:38:53 AM
Hmm, I wonder how relevant is this kind of article. I mean the criterias are very subjective, can this study extend to a greater scale?
Posted by: C. C. at Apr 18, 2007 8:57:33 AM
Is objective well-being less important than subjective well-being?
Posted by: Matt at Apr 18, 2007 9:02:30 AM
I believe that men enjoy children more than women do, as they are less stressed by worry. Men should want more children than do women.
Do you get out much?
Posted by: Jeff Burton at Apr 18, 2007 9:04:00 AM
I have one child, and do not believe a second one would raise my happiness. However, it decreases my happiness volatility, as losing one child would result in the no children state. Therefore, I will have towo children to increase my personal sense of security.
Posted by: Hilary Bognar at Apr 18, 2007 9:10:01 AM
It would be interesting to see the happiness of children based on number of siblings factored into this discussion. Parents often value the long term happiness of their children over their own, so a sense that a child would be happier with a sibling may outweigh a small decrease in personal happiness.
Posted by: Brien at Apr 18, 2007 9:11:08 AM
A parents happiness is somewhat dependent on the happiness of his/her child(ren).
Children with siblings have built in friends. Everyone I know with multiple kids will tell you there is some type of interaction between them. Any child after the 1st has a head start in that they have another teacher to help guide them into becoming a person.
Happiness relates to how you embrace the situation. Was the inclusion of the child planned or unexpected? Are the parents barely able to keep their own life together or are they fairly stable?
Why not measure how many friends you need to be happy while we are at it? How about the number of times you fart with happiness? I speculate the less you worry about passing gas and disbursing internal pressures would make one happier. Research has shown if you far 3.4 times a day you will be 22.3% happier!
Directly relating happiness to a specific number of children is absurd. Obviously this is just an opinion (mine as well as the articles). Having kids isn't for everyone but for some people it is a very enriching experience. I have 3 kids (and plan to stay at 3). Each one is a seperate experience that both my wife and I enjoy. Our #2 & #3 kids are independent of the first - we did not have them as "backup plans" in case the 1st turned out bad.
The motivation for my comment is I feel this is a very biased opinion. Anyone thinking about having kids should have a more balanced perception. Besides people reading this are actually intelligent. We need more smart people having babies to balance out all the people who do not think before they procreate!
Posted by: Andy at Apr 18, 2007 9:16:39 AM
How meaningful are these sorts of statistics? If a certain amount of people report increased happiness with less children, can this inform individuals? Perhaps personal utility is one of many competing obligations and not the foremost consideration when deciding to have children.
I'm not taking any chances that my name won't continue for multiple millenia. Seven children at least. Be fruitful and multiply.
Posted by: John Goes at Apr 18, 2007 9:17:58 AM
From my own admittedly limited experience, it seems like people have a second child because doing so actually makes it easier to raise well-adjusted kids. That is, having two kids is harder (less happy) for the parents in the short run, but if it makes for a better "product" in the long run it is easy to understand why they do it.
I know some well-adjusted only children, but in my experience they are the exception and not the rule.
Posted by: Amber at Apr 18, 2007 9:20:32 AM
I believe that men enjoy children more than women do, as they are less stressed by worry. Men should want more children than do women.
It seems there are other factors at play, as in my experience this is dramatically false.
Posted by: Charles Hope at Apr 18, 2007 9:45:11 AM
The findings about to what extent boys and girls are substitute goods surely must be regarded as culturally variable.
Posted by: Cyrus at Apr 18, 2007 10:10:59 AM
I sometimes wonder whether the enjoyment of children is a giant endowment effect.
Posted by: Yan Li at Apr 18, 2007 10:48:35 AM
Well, it is a damned good thing for the species that we don't know what would make us the most happy.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Apr 18, 2007 11:02:28 AM
Yancey,
Falling birth rates in high income countries suggest people
are figuring it out.
Second kid brings sibling rivalry. Of course, single kids
are more likely to be spoiled, including having parents who
can afford to send them to a more expensive college...
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Apr 18, 2007 11:15:30 AM
Can anybody comment on how the number of sibling's affect a child's happiness?
I grew up with seven siblings and I find the support network they now provide to be extremely valuable in almost every aspect of my life: professional, social, spiritual, even academic.
Posted by: Charles DuHadway at Apr 18, 2007 11:42:35 AM
cats > children
Posted by: Noah Yetter at Apr 18, 2007 11:47:46 AM
I have three siblings. They made my life miserable as a child, and they contribute nothing to it as an adult. In addition to generating misery as a child the split of resources for education and enrichment also severely adversely effected me (my parents with one, or perhaps two children could have afforded to send me to decent private schools, better universities, etc, with four kids to support, there was simply no way).
I very occasionally run across folks like Charles Duhadway for whom a large number of siblings has been an asset, but more often than not the folks I know who had more than one sibling found them to be a net detraction from their life.
Posted by: quadrupole at Apr 18, 2007 11:52:11 AM
I don't think this study informs us whether we should have children or not. Women without children tend to be people who have never been married, have social problems, or are otherwise unstable: therefore, they don't have children.
So, I think, at least in the case of women without children, the causal chain should be reversed.
Posted by: Josh at Apr 18, 2007 12:03:29 PM
It's too narrow a question. The obvious complementary question is: What makes you happier as grandparents? If you have just one child, the chance of even becoming a grandparent before you are dead is lower.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Apr 18, 2007 12:37:40 PM
As a first child, these results are unsurprising.
Posted by: Josh at Apr 18, 2007 12:37:40 PM
What this reminds me of is the value of tradition, as pointed out by G.K. Chesterton. Here we have a lot of smart people commenting, but nobody thought of the grandparents angle for quite some time, which shows that even the most rational tend to miss the point a lot. A tradition-based society, in contrast, is a sort of "democracy of the dead" in which we don't suffer as much from our own personal limitations as thinkers.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Apr 18, 2007 12:43:25 PM
On the grandparent angle... if you have more children than you can acceptably capitalize, you reduce your chances of them having grandchildren in a time frame you will be allowed to enjoy them.
Posted by: quadrupole at Apr 18, 2007 1:28:13 PM
Gee, if we all take that advice we can cut global population in half in one generation. And we'll all be a little subjectively happier until we realize how badly we've screwed ourselves.
Having four small children I can verify it's an awful lot of work, and clearly takes an awful lot of my resources away from pleasing myself. Why, I could be trading up to a new Porsche every year instead of paying tuition and nanny bills. But my resource allocations are now made on the basis of maximizing the enjoyment of a family of six rather than just me.
There is also an unbridgeable difference between the consideration of the effect of a hypothetical further child on your happiness and the consideration of your actions in respect to an actual child.
Posted by: mkl at Apr 18, 2007 2:30:30 PM
Dogs>cats
Posted by: Fletcher at Apr 18, 2007 3:49:20 PM
Is all very simple.
If you like kids and can afford to have them, you should have kids. You should have as many as you can handle. If you don't like kids and are not a "kids-type" of person, then you should not have kids.
What more can anyone say about it?
Posted by: Kurt9 at Apr 18, 2007 4:06:06 PM
It seems to me that the more likely a person is to make their decisions based on statistical finding such as this the less likely they are to be representative enough of the data-set of people from whom those statistics were drawn that the statistics remain significantly predictive.
Posted by: michael vassar at Apr 18, 2007 4:09:51 PM
fleas>dogs
Posted by: dearieme at Apr 18, 2007 4:20:02 PM
From the article:
In summary, Models 4 and 8 of Table 5 reveal a striking male–female
difference regarding the effect of children on well-being after controlling
for current partnership (see also Figure 3). Females derive happiness gains
from children even after controlling for current partnership status. The happiness
of males, however, depends primarily on partnership status; once
current partnership status is controlled, men’s happiness does not vary systematically
with fertility. These findings suggest a provocative interpretation
about the motivations of men and women in forming partnerships. In
particular, the results can be interpreted to suggest that women form partnerships,
among other reasons, in order to have children who increase their
subjective well-being. Males, on the other hand, have children in order to
remain in the partnerships that strongly affect their happiness. Having children
is a strong predictor of currently being in partnerships for males (as
well as for females); but conditional on current partnership status, children
do not contribute to men’s subjective well-being.21 The male preference for
boys, revealed by our earlier analyses in Figure 2, may in this context be
the result of the higher divorce probabilities of couples who have a firstborn
daughter rather than a first-born son (Dahl and Moretti 2004; Morgan,
Lye, and Condran 1988).22
Posted by: joeo at Apr 18, 2007 4:30:11 PM
I am an only child of a woman who has a childless identical twin, and this logic sounds totally bogus to me. The number of variables influencing happiness, other than me, which differ between my mom and my aunt are enormous. They have substantially different relationship histories (a factor which obviously influences not only happiness but...oh, right...motherhood). They have different professional histories which, coupled with the different relationship histories, has led them to substantially different financial situations. They have noticeably different tendencies toward happiness (my mom is markedly more angstful and introspective, my aunt cheerful, even though the objective circumstances of their lives -- apparently including, but not limited to, me -- should make my mom happier).
Basically, I'm not even sure the twin thing is a useful way into the problem, and even if it is there are a host of variables which affect both parity and happiness, so I am skeptical of measuring a causal link between children and happiness in this way.
Posted by: Andromeda at Apr 18, 2007 4:45:59 PM
Given Caplan's theory, I think that this should be measured again after 25 years or so, to see what kind of an effect there is then.
Hilary: Wow. I thought that I was prone to thinking and making decisions based on excessively strict and unfeeling economic logic, but you take the cake.
Posted by: Adam at Apr 18, 2007 5:03:00 PM
My impression is that comparing twins is a disaster for finding out about happiness. Wouldn't the childless twin mother be comparing HERSELF to her sister? Even adult non-twin siblings do a lot of things because they are in competion, and constantly see themselves in the light of their sibling(s). I wonder how it would come out if you kept sibling rivalry out of it somehow.
Posted by: mae at Apr 18, 2007 5:14:20 PM
The "fear of losing the first child" is a large, mostly unexpressed factor, IMO. In my particular viewpoint, the twin discoveries of having your first are (a) how much happiness is really possible (a lot!) from having a child, and (b) how excruciatingly vulnerable (the child, and therefore) that happiness is. And if that child dies, there is no "ground state" to return to, just anguish.
The second (and subsequent) child ensure some semblance of such a "ground state" in case of the loss of a child, and the somewhat lesser increase in enjoyment is accompanied by not only a lesser increase in vulnerability of that happiness, but a decrease in the catastrophic vulnerability of that overall happiness.
This was probably more frankly expressed (or at least considered) in a more agrarian society, where children actually brought an economic benefit, coupled with higher accidental death rates. But it still holds.
Posted by: biwah at Apr 18, 2007 5:30:43 PM
If men are much happier with boys, then doesn't it make sense that at men with 1 daughter should have more than 1 child?
But I agree with the above comment that this study conveys no useful knowledge. When a person elects to breed, how the average or median person "feels" about it is pretty low on the list of useful data.
Last men do worry less and appear more nonplussed by children, but I don't think they achieve the depths of love and wonderment that women do.
Posted by: guy in the veal calf office at Apr 18, 2007 9:29:10 PM
In comparing identical twins, Kohler found that mothers with one child are about 20 percent happier than their childless counterparts
Since children are not allocated randomly this doesn't necessarily demonstrate what it wants to. Although this is a creative control, twins are still not the same person (nonshared environment, etc). Perhaps the depressive twin would have become even more depressed if she had a child. Perhaps the happy twin would be even happier if she didn't have her child.
Did the depressive twin plan on having a child, and couldn't find a mate? Or did the depressive twin think she didn't want children and it turned out she actually did?
Did the happy twin want a child and then have one? Or did she not want a child, accidently conceive* and was happier for it?
* I suppose we'd have to look at women who do not believe in abortion/adoption for this.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Apr 18, 2007 9:30:59 PM
I wonder if there is an artefactual element to the result. I would expect a bimodal distribution with a single child - those who are more happy and those who are less. With additional children I would expect the distribution to spread out as some find more than one child better, worse or the same as one or no children. Because people generally start with a fairly estimate of their own happiness the spread would largely shift the average down. What this would really mean in terms of the impact of children on happiness if the scale could be centred in some meaningful way is hard to predict.
Posted by: am at Apr 18, 2007 10:45:21 PM
"The argument for more than one kid, in this view, would rest on risk-aversion and the chance that one kid might die or not work out so well."
I would implore anyone capable of that line of reasoning in this day and age not to procreate. This statement is a sure sign of defective emotional intelligence - something best not passed onto one child, much less two.
Posted by: fustercluck at Apr 18, 2007 11:01:17 PM
I would add that for a healthy percentage of your readership, which seems more concerned with market efficiency and the quest to numerically quantify things such as expressions of happiness more than the lives of loved ones, the correct answer is two point something: the optimum replacement rate of the couple plus some percentage to replace those in society who will never procreate.
Then again, that's assuming that the current population level as it its most efficient. I'll leave that argument for you soulless eggheads.
Posted by: fustercluck at Apr 18, 2007 11:10:36 PM
Yersinia pestis > fleas (so sue me)
Posted by: rluser at Apr 19, 2007 2:36:54 AM
So, should we assume the Chinese are (collectively) the happiest people on earth?
Or does the government-imposed restriction on having more than one child, and thus,
all esle equal, being less happy, itself create a level of unhappiness that counteracts the happiness of having on one child?
Posted by: glenn at Apr 19, 2007 9:56:50 AM
The question on the survey was "How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?" I don't see that translating into "How happy are you?" More kids means more strain on resources (time, money, energy) and more opportunities for women in particular to see where they are falling short, in terms of juggling motherhood, marriage, work, etc. So, sure, I can see a dip in satisfaction. But happiness is much less tangible, especially (and I'll sound maudlin here) the happiness kids bring when, as an earlier commenter noted, you really are a "kid person". My house is a mess, my checkbook is unbalanced, and I need more sleep. I'm not satisfied with this state of things. But I'm happier than I've ever been.
Posted by: MommaSteph at Apr 19, 2007 10:38:48 PM
"Falling birth rates in high income countries"
Basically an incorrect generalization:
1) Is Iran really far wealthier than the U.S.? That´d be news to me.
2) Very close to 20% of German women born 1901-1905 remained childless, which was the highest percentage among all cohorts of German women born during the first half of the 20th century.
3)In the GDR, e.g., there was a cohort of women of whom less than 10% remained childless. Even having been poorer than the West, the GDR should realistically be assumed to have been richer than Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany.
3) German birth rates are underreported because only the children from a woman´s current marriage are counted (Reread that sentence - I am not joking here). The real birth rate - while not as high as in the U.S. - is higher than in Iran (to stick with the example).
4) Rising birth rates in the U.S. and Britain can be demonstrated to generally have had a strong correlation to indices of perceived increases in wealth.
5) There seem to be two conditions that lead to rising birth rates:
a) perceived increases in wealth (per the examples given above, dto. wealthy Chinese paying for the right to be exempted from the rule of one child, the current trend change in Russia and many more examples)
b) the perception of children as a source of or a substitute for wealth.
The latter condition encompasses agricultural societies, genuinely traditionalist segments of modern society (religious sects come to mind) and impoverished societies that cultivate a politically motivated, inauthentic traditionalism (that last category could cover both Islamic countries under foreign occupation and the episodic spike in the birth rate in Nazi Germany, e.g. The category appears to embody either pessimistic assumptions about survival rates or delusions about superior reproductive fitness - maybe just a bipolar fixation with both.)
Thus demographics seems to be an excellent example for a dualistic non-equilibrium of the kind Krugman talked about in the context of oil prices: demographic trends are grounded in perceptions of either affordability or necessity. (Regional differences in the U.S. illustrate the first theme very convincingly.)
6) Demographics shows that there is at least one subject area involving long-term change and feedback processes where the latent ahistoricism of economic methodology carries a substantial penalty in terms of foregone insights. Static preference orderings and stable utility functions cannot account for the effects induced by economic actors who switch between worldviews and replace one mental model of the world they live in with another. Should birth rates in the U.S. ever fall to Iranian, Japanese or Hongkong levels - or, even trickier, as is the case in Germany, be officially, but misleadingly reported to be at such a level -, then some economists in the U.S. would likely begin to engage in the ensuing culture wars as much as some of them already do in Germany, thereby illustrating how one decade´s recommended happiness calculus turns into another´s evil ideology.
Posted by: Jörg Wenck at Jun 8, 2007 3:10:50 PM
I have an older brother. Having an sibling doesn't gaurantee anything. We haven't talked in 2 years. Besides, he lives half way across the country.
Posted by: natalie at Jun 24, 2007 7:36:21 AM
I find this almost interesting. So, a parent's happiness should rely entirely on their child? And, if one wishes to have another child it is strictly due to the concern that the first child will die?
Is the person who wrote this a robot?
This is some self-centered logic here. More than one child may come from the paternal wish to love another person that he or she get's to be with from the very day they are born. Will it bring the parent more joy? Who the hell knows, but that argument is ridiculous. Parents capable of unconditional and overwhelming love don't see children as a means to happiness. Anyone who does should NOT be having kids.
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Posted by: 南京北春 at Aug 21, 2007 3:16:12 AM
When I hear arguments such as "there is no guarantee siblings will be close /I have a brother and we haven't spoken in years" I just want to cry - this is how bad the logic is. First, there is no guarantee you will cross the street alive (the proverbial bus). Second, if you and your brother have not talked in years, you were most probably raised by parents who did not value closeness to begin with. Too bad for you. I cannot imagine any siblings who grew up sharing a room, giggling at night before going to sleep, and just building childhood memories together ...who would end up not talking to each other for years. Some parents simply rub off their distanced, cold manner onto their children. In that case, yes, the sibling trick is wortless, at best a drain on resources. Otherwise, a sibling relationship will most likely remain the strongest and most authentic tie one has (besides that with the spouse, though sometimes it can be superior to the one with the spuse). In an increasingly mobile, self-centered, community-devoid world, I dare your only-kid to count on "friends" to fill his/her "close relationship" needs. Or wish him/her a spouse who will fill ALL of their needs, at ALL times. Wait. There is no such spouse.
Two children is ideal in the western world. Contemporary populations know it instinctively and this is exactly why most people consciously choose to have two children.
Posted by: cristina at Aug 28, 2007 2:02:56 PM
Children should not be viewed as a vehicle to happiness, but rather a vehicle to self-fulfillment. Self-fulfillment is a higher level than hapiness and is often acquired through challenge and self-sacrifice. Those that are focused on their own happiness are fostering a "what's in it for me?" attitude. WHich will surely lead to poor parenting.
Do the kids a favor and remain childless if you think that parenting is an exploration of how to make yourself happy. Parenting is an exploration of how to help individuals maximize their potential in this world. By doing this, most well adjusted people, will attain a great deal of self-fullfillment (and also a great deal of happiness). If you're in the latter camp, the more the merrier...
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Posted by: maple story at Sep 11, 2007 3:51:59 AM
I notice several negative reactions on this string to the whole subject of analyzing subjective happiness based on economic theories, statistics and the like. All of those commentators should acknowledge that a person can easily speak (and think) in such a "robotic" fashion just as one of the many tools to be employed in looking at this subject. The very people who are so "robotic" are, indeed, so often those who end up throwing caution to the wind and just having more kids. Nonetheless, the "robotic" analysis can be very helpful for everyone to help frame this question and make better sense of life. It is also can just be plain fun to break things down and sort them out like this. As a person on the cusp of parenting, this string is very good and representative of the most salient points. My conclusion has been that if the desire to have one or more children enters and occupies your mind with frequency, perhaps several times a week for a couple years or more, and if you are in a relationship that should be stable, then you should have a child. After that child is perhaps a year old or so, you should revisit the question in full detail (including "robotic" and emotional perspectives). The main criticism that I would have of this string, thus, is that much of the analysis treats building a family as though one can more easily choose how many to have versus the reality of having them one at a time and deciding in that context of understanding being built over a time.
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Posted by: batteries at Oct 16, 2007 10:49:49 AM
If my husband and I had decided to only have one child we would never have had the priveledge of knowing our second, third and soon to be fourth child. I thank god every day for all my children. I personally feel that parents who have more children learn not to sweat the small stuff and really learn to focus on what is important in life. Sure my oldest son may have had to learn to share and cooperate and to pitch in. And I guess he has had to accept that the world does not revolve around him but he also has constant companionship and has the oppurtunity to be a big brother, a mentor an example which by the way gives him a real sense of accomplishment and pride. Sure they fight and there are times where they must compromise which for a child is difficult but the majority of the time they play and share. It is wonderful to watch. As for me, I am happier now than I have ever been in my life. I am more organized, more focused, more effective and I truly enjoy all my children. I am less selfish and more giving. I am a better parent and a more commited partner. A larger family requires that a husband and wife really learn to cooperate and to share the responsiblity of parenting more equally which only benefits the children. I think it also strengthens the bond between a man and women. Sure more kids means more work but it also means more love, more hugs, more kisses, more first smiles, etc. To see each child develop this distinct personality. The idea that a parent with only one child is happier is ridiculous. I personally feel sorry for both kids with no siblings and parents who only have one child.
I am sure there are people with lots of syblings who were miserable as well as kids without syblings who were and are miserable. I think that the happiness of kids and parents has less to do with number of children in the family and more to do with the dynamics of that family. In fact, many of the mother's I know who only have one child always seem overwhelmed.
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Posted by: GW at Nov 9, 2007 10:25:46 PM
I don't like this. I grew up with a brother and sister and they are my best friends. I can't even imagine life without them. Being an only child would have been boring and lonely for me. My best friend in elementary school was an only child and she always wanted siblings so she use to always hang out with me and mine. As far as I know, my mother says she was just as happy having her first, second, and third child. She also says she has enjoyed every moment of raising us individually. I don't think there was ever a time where I felt like I didn't have enough attention and I'm attending an excellent university. I also have lots of friends who get along with their siblings!
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