Child-free women are happier

Every GSS respondent is asked how happy he or she is.

HAPPY 157. Taken all together, how would you say things are these days--would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		HAPPY
		1 VERY HAPPY	2 PRETTY HAPPY	3 NOT TOO HAPPY	ROW TOTAL
MARITAL	1: MARRIED	40.4 9,860	51.9 12,670	7.7 1,867	100.0 24,398
	2: WIDOWED	24.6 1,079	56.0 2,459	19.4 851	100.0 4,388
	3: DIVORCED	19.6 956	62.3 3,042	18.1 886	100.0 4,884
	4: SEPARATED	15.8 232	56.2 823	28.0 411	100.0 1,465
	5: NEVER MARRIED	22.6 1,847	63.1 5,169	14.3 1,170	100.0 8,186
	COL TOTAL	32.3 13,974	55.8 24,163	12.0 5,184	100.0 43,321

As we see from the above table, married people are a lot happier. It’s not entirely clear to me whether marriage makes people happier, or if unhappy people are less attractive to the opposite sex and therefore are less likely to get married or to stay married.

Because widowed respondents seem pretty unhappy, the evidence is that marriage does make people happier than they otherwise would be if the were unmarried.

Because marriage is such a huge component of happiness, my future analysis of happiness will be restricted to married respondents.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		HAPPY
		1 VERY HAPPY	2 PRETTY HAPPY	3 NOT TOO HAPPY	ROW TOTAL
AGE	1: 18-34	38.4 2,701	54.2 3,811	7.3 516	100.0 7,028
	2: 35-64	39.7 5,515	52.4 7,282	7.9 1,102	100.0 13,899
	3: 65-98	47.4 1,620	45.5 1,555	7.1 242	100.0 3,417
	COL TOTAL	40.4 9,836	52.0 12,649	7.6 1,860	100.0 24,345

We see from the above table that senior citizens are happier. My theory is that it’s because they get free money form the government and they don’t have to work. Most people are happier when they don’t have to get yelled at by a boss or worry about losing their job.

Now let’s compare family income (not the respondents’ income like most of my other income analyses) in 1986 dollars for respondents under the age of 65 to happiness:

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		HAPPY
		1 VERY HAPPY	2 PRETTY HAPPY	3 NOT TOO HAPPY	ROW TOTAL
REALINC	1: 0-19999	32.2 1,428	54.6 2,421	13.3 589	100.0 4,438
	2: 20000-39999	38.2 3,168	54.8 4,546	7.1 589	100.0 8,302
	3: 40000-89999	43.3 2,008	51.6 2,390	5.1 236	100.0 4,634
	4: 90000-999999	46.5 971	49.7 1,038	3.8 80	100.0 2,090
	COL TOTAL	38.9 7,574	53.4 10,396	7.7 1,494	100.0 19,464

It turns out that the platitude that “money can’t buy you happiness” is wrong. Higher income leads to greater happiness.

Perhaps I’d be stating the obvious to point out that it sucks to be poor.

Finally, the headline comparison:

Statistics for SEX = 1(MALE)
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		HAPPY
		1 VERY HAPPY	2 PRETTY HAPPY	3 NOT TOO HAPPY	ROW TOTAL
CHILDS	0: NONE	39.9 671	53.3 896	6.8 115	100.0 1,681
	1: ONE	34.7 670	57.0 1,100	8.2 159	100.0 1,929
	2: TWO	40.3 1,429	52.3 1,853	7.4 261	100.0 3,543
	3: THREE	39.8 880	52.4 1,159	7.8 172	100.0 2,212
	4: FOUR	40.3 474	51.4 605	8.3 97	100.0 1,176
	5: FIVE	38.4 202	51.0 268	10.5 55	100.0 525
	6: SIX	34.7 87	52.5 132	12.8 32	100.0 252
	7: SEVEN	39.6 61	46.7 72	13.8 21	100.0 154
	8: EIGHT OR MORE	43.5 80	43.6 80	12.9 24	100.0 184
	COL TOTAL	39.1 4,555	52.9 6,166	8.0 936	100.0 11,657

Statistics for SEX = 2(FEMALE)
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		HAPPY
		1 VERY HAPPY	2 PRETTY HAPPY	3 NOT TOO HAPPY	ROW TOTAL
CHILDS	0: NONE	44.5 780	49.3 865	6.2 109	100.0 1,754
	1: ONE	41.6 902	50.7 1,100	7.7 168	100.0 2,170
	2: TWO	42.3 1,646	51.2 1,991	6.5 253	100.0 3,890
	3: THREE	40.6 982	52.3 1,265	7.0 170	100.0 2,418
	4: FOUR	41.4 515	50.3 626	8.4 104	100.0 1,245
	5: FIVE	40.5 231	51.3 293	8.2 47	100.0 571
	6: SIX	38.6 108	51.1 143	10.3 29	100.0 279
	7: SEVEN	36.4 59	52.3 84	11.3 18	100.0 161
	8: EIGHT OR MORE	33.2 69	54.5 113	12.3 26	100.0 208
	COL TOTAL	41.7 5,292	51.0 6,481	7.3 924	100.0 12,697

For men, one child makes a man unhappy, but having two to four is neutral compared to having none at all. I don’t understand what’s so bad about having just one.

You would have expected that women would be happier if they had children, but the reality is that child-free women are happier. The lesson for women is that they will be happier if the focus on their career and not have children, because money makes a woman happy but children make a woman unhappy.

What exactly is the purpose of having children?

Comments

[SFG]

"I don’t understand what’s so bad about having just one."
You have to live in Manhattan.

No, seriously, see Sailer on the Affordable Family Formation gap. There are more big families in red states and rural people are happier; there was an article on this in, of all places, New York magazine a few weeks ago. Cross-reference this with urban vs suburban vs rural and I think the results will be revealing.

As for kids making women unhappy: oh, that's easy. Women actually have to raise the little buggers. Odd given the large number of women who seem to prefer traditional roles, though.

[Tim Lundeen]

You seem to be drawing some very general conclusions from small differences in average happiness :-)

One factor re happiness of older marrieds is that people are happier once their kids leave home (per Gilbert's book Stumling on Happiness, a recommended read). Is there any way to tease out happiness of older marrieds who have had kids vs those who have not? Then you could see what the effect of having children is on happiness for older people. Perhaps the integral of lifetime happiness is higher on average when you have kids :-)

[ChrisV82]

What exactly is the purpose of having children?

Free labor.

[spungen]

"I don’t understand what’s so bad about having just one."

Assuming these differences are statistically significant, maybe it's because first-time parents don't know what they're doing, therefore things are more stressful.

Re women's happiness: Women without children are *younger*, overall, than women with. Many who are childless at 25 will be moms by 35. I can think of several reasons younger women might be happier. A better comparison would be how the reported happiness differs between mothers and childless women at age 40-plus. Or 50-plus.

"What exactly is the purpose of having children?"

Well, do you want to live in a geriatric nation?

And some people do actually like them, you know.

[Douglas Knight]

Half Sigma,
I think you make too much out of the color-coded statistical significance. Looking at just the numbers, two children doesn't seem different than no children for women: 2.2% shift from very happy to pretty happy and .3% shift from pretty happy to not too hapy. At 3 and 4 children, women are losing happiness compared to 0 or 2, but I'd say the picture is pretty much the same as the men: 2-4 is just like 0.
It's a pretty weird picture.

[Jason Malloy]

Research indicates women are less happy when they are raising children, but return fully to pre-child levels when the children leave home for college.

But children may be to women how writing is to Steven Pinker. When asked if he likes writing he responds he likes "having written". Are women happier having had children if not rearing them? If so does it balance out anyway? It's good to have a lifespan perspective on happiness.

[bbartlog]

Also, the happiness figure for childless women is probably pretty heavily weighted by women who didn't want children. There is a pretty large chunk of women who would probably be unhappy if permanently childless, but they mostly end up with children. There are some selection problems here.

The most remarkable result to me, taking the figures at face value, is that being married makes about as much difference to happiness as moving from the lowest to highest income category.

[spungen]

Another reason for the slight childlessness-happiness correlation is that you selected only married couples. Childless couples would probably tend to be in a newer marriage -- so, less time for problems to develop.

I wonder if results from 2006 would be substantially different from the 1986 data you used. Maybe back then, people were more likely to be childless by true choice, busy with exciting careers or somesuch. Nowadays, what with the worse job market and "loafing" and all, maybe more people just can't find suitable partners or don't have the money.

[michael vassar]

Since people with more money have fewer children you need to control for income on the happiness and # of children table.
Also, I second several of the above comments.

[Chris]

One child also equals "first child."

First time parents are always overwhelmed by the first child.

Subsequent children seem easier to raise, by the first you have seen it all.