Building a Familycountries. In both Britain and Australia people without
partners suffer if more other people are partnered, but the
effect is smallish.^8
Having Children
If partnerships bring joy, what about children? This is com-
plicated to investigate, because people can to a large extent
choose whether or not to have children. To a degree people
who want children more get more children, just as people
who like classical music are more likely to listen to it. So if
we compare people with and without children we may be
just comparing people with different tastes, without discov-
ering what difference the children made to those who had
them.^9 To find that out, we have to follow the same people
over time. So we shall focus mainly on that.
In these surveys the only evidence we have is on whether
people have children who are still living with them.^10 So we
can say nothing about the benefits or otherwise of children
who are grown up or of grandchildren. As for having chil-
dren in the home, we find in our equations that the most
effective variable is whether there are any children, not how
many there are. So in Figure 5.5 we show for the British
household panel, the proportion of people who have any
child living at home. After 45 this plunges, and we therefore
confine our analysis to people aged 30– 45, or in the BCS as
usual to people aged 34 and 42.
So what does the evidence show— are children a bless-
ing? In the BCS cohort, the effect of having any child is to
raise life- satisfaction by 0.25– 0.30 points (in cross- section