On the Association between Parenthood, Number of Children and Expectations of Old-Age Welfare

This paper explores the association between having children and expected subjective old-age welfare within a European context. Data for 31 countries from the European Social Survey are used to model the respondents’ concern about their expected old-age well-being and welfare. Having children and the number of children are the primary explanatory variables but a broad set of controls including gender, age, education level, household income and health, as well as others are included. Regional variation in this association within Europe is discussed using four larger groups of countries. The results indicate that those with a higher number of children report that they are less worried about old-age welfare compared to those who have fewer children. In general, those without children had lower concerns regarding their old-age than those with children