Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Life satisfaction

One surprise from the new ONS well-being statistics is that, of the four UK countries, people in Northern Ireland report the highest score for life satisfaction. No regional breakdowns are given, at this stage, of the relationship between personal happiness & other personal & family characterisics, but I was wondering if this finding might be related to the fact that fertility (& thus, presumably, family size) is still higher in Northern Ireland than in other countriesof the UK

The UK-wide figures provide no evidence for the notion that living with children makes people happier.

Nor, surprisingly, does living wth children make men less happy than women: precisely the opposite, if there are more than five of the little blighters in the house. Men in this position reported the (probably rogue because of the small number of them who turned up in the sample) life satisfaction rating of 7.8 (out of a maximum 10); women ground down by this experience could muster a score of only 7.2.

Funnily enough, although both men & women with a baby in the house are among the happiest in the land, children are more likely to keep a man happy as they grow; a woman’s enchantment wanes as the children reach their teens