Abstract
The low perceived subjective well-being of potential parents has been put forward as an explanation for the low fertility rates in developed countries. Accordingly, research about the effect of parenthood on life satisfaction is increasing, although the related studies are mostly restricted to western countries. The case of Hungary represents a great opportunity to extend the scope of the related research as this country has one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe, along with an exceptionally long and extensively utilised system of parental leave. The issue is examined here with a genetic matching method using longitudinal data from the Turning Points of Life Course survey (Hungarian GGS). Overall, the research described in this paper finds that fertility has a positive effect on subjective well-being in general. Moreover, not only a first child but also a second one increase subjective well-being. However, observation of the moderating effect of gender reveals that women benefit from having children both in the short and long term, whereas men benefit only in the short term. To sum up, this paper finds that pre-existing theory that uses the link between parenthood and subjective well-being to explain fertility trends makes a limited contribution to the discussion about the Hungarian situation.
Highlights
Developed countries have for decades been experiencing below replacement level fertility
Most longitudinal evidence has come from western-European countries and finds that parenthood in general has a positive effect on subjective well-being (Balbo and Arpino 2016; Clark et al 2008; Frijters et al 2011; Kohler et al 2005; Pollmann-Schult 2014)
In order to rule out confounding variables, those to whom a child was born in the observation period were matched to those to whom no children were born in this period using genetic matching
Summary
Developed countries have for decades been experiencing below replacement level fertility. Within CEE countries this paper focuses on Hungary, which is an especially interesting case since here the persistently low fertility rate is paired with one of the longest and most extensively used periods of parental leave in the region (Spéder and Kapitány 2014). Policies such as parental leave schemes can be designed in a way that increases the subjective well-being of parents. Set-point theory argues that the effect of parenthood is only temporary, subjective well-being eventually returns to the pre-birth baseline level (Headey and Wearing 1989; Lucas et al 2004). Though this method has been used to analyse the effects of parenthood (Baetschmann et al 2016; Balbo and Arpino 2016; Sironi and Billari 2013) and other life events (Binder and Coad 2016) it has never been applied to examine the effect of parenthood on subjective well-being in Hungary
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