More Happiness = More Babies?

This paper expands the current microeconomic research on the effect of happiness, or subjective well-being, on fertility rates by examining the trends on a macroeconomic level. The effects are studied using panel data analysis on 97 countries over a time period of 2006-2015. Data on happiness is collected from the World Happiness Report 2017 and data on fertility rates is collected from the World Bank DataBank. This paper finds that subjective well-being has a significant positive effect on fertility rates in developed countries, but in undeveloped countries this effect is insignificant. Furthermore, variables that reflect self-fulfilment (such as freedom to make life choices) tend to have significant effects on fertility in developed countries. In undeveloped countries however, socio-economic variables (such as GDP and life expectancy at birth) tend to have significant effects on fertility. These results have significant political and socio-economic implications for developed countries struggling to increase their fertility rates back to the replacement level.