Abstract
Researchers have begun assessing differences in well-being among parents versus non-parents using a cross-national comparative approach. Given the availability of multiple major datasets, a systematic methodological study isolating the effects of data choice would be helpful. To accomplish this objective, we draw upon two major datasets (European Social Survey and International Social Survey Programme) and we devise and implement a uniquely controlled method on five fronts by holding time, outcome measurement, parenthood operationalization, geographic sampling, and set of covariates constant. Our design features four distinct observations for each of 11 European countries (two from the 2006 and 2008 ESS, two from the 2007 and 2008 ISSP; 44 cross sections, N = 57,539). Employing both fixed- and random-effects approaches, we demonstrate that choice of major dataset (ISSP or ESS) and choice between contemporaneous cross-sections both contribute strikingly to the estimates of parenthood on happiness. In fact, effect variances at the cross-sectional, dataset and country levels are all significant and are not statistically different. We conclude by discussing several limitations of our analyses and implications for parenthood researchers.
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Notes
As a robustness check, we specified two other conversions of 4-point ISSP happiness variable to the 11-point ESS format (2.75, 5.5, 8.25, 11 and 0, 3.33, 6.67, 10). Doing so produced substantively identical findings for the random-effects analyses (with some differences in the lower and upper population variance and coefficient confidence limits, but all three variance components for parenthood remaining significant and overlapping). We therefore opted for the 2.5, 5.0, 7.5, 10.0 format because it provided even numerical spacing between choices while also creating a minor distinction between bottom categories (i.e., the bottom category for the ISSP refers to ‘not at all happy’ whereas the bottom category for the ESS refers to ‘extremely unhappy’—the ISSP bottom category does not seem as subjectively severe as the ESS bottom category).
Indeed, random-effects modeling using the original rather than the transformed happiness variable led to substantively identical conclusions. Thus the transformed variables are used in the interest of greatly improving overall model fit.
.
The ESS, like the ISSP, contains information on whether there are multiple children in the household. Thus we could have broken down children’s effects on happiness by number of children in the household. However, because the current argument rests on the issue of within- and between-dataset variance, we constrained the analysis simply to the presence or absence of children.
The ISSP and ESS both provide weights corresponding to the probability of selection. These weights were standardized within countries so that within-country means equaled 1. Analyses presented in this paper are unweighted, but weighted fixed- and random-effects analyses led to substantively identical conclusions in that weighted random-effects analyses (using xtmixed with Level-1 probability weighting in Stata 12) produced significant and overlapping effect variances at the cross-sectional, dataset and country levels, and weighted fixed-effects analyses revealed similar patterns of within- and between-method instability within countries. Mean country happiness fixed-effects rank-orders remained same for ISSP 2007 except for flipping of Belgium and UK; ISSP 2008 remained same; ESS 2006 remained same except for flipping of France and Germany and mutual interchanging between Ireland, Sweden and Germany; ESS 2008 remained same except for flipping of Belgium and Germany. Parental happiness fixed-effects rank-orders shifted somewhat due to a tendency for coefficients to cluster closer together in weighted analyses. All rank-order shifts (unweighted analysis → weighted analysis) were within three ranks except for Russia’s shift in ESS 2008:
ISSP 2007
ISSP 2008
ESS 2006
ESS 2008
*Finl: 5 –>2
*Switz: 6–>5
*Nor: 4–>2
*Pol: 2–>1
*Rus: 2–>4
*Swe: 5–>6
*Fr: 2–>3
*Nor: 3–>2
*Nor: 6–>5
*Belg: 8–>7
*Fin: 5–>4
*Fin: 4–>3
*Fr: 9–>6
*Finl: 9–>8
*Gmn: 3–>5
*Swe: 5–>4
*Switz: 4–>7
*Rus: 7–>9
*Ire: 10–>8
*Belg: 6–>5
*Gmn: 7–>8
*Switz: 8–>9
*Rus: 1–>6
*Belg: 10–>9
*UK: 9–>10
*Ire: 11–>9
*Ire: 8–>10
*Switz: 9–>10
Visual inspection of Table 3 reveals that the ESS 2006 estimate for Poland is highly aberrant. Exclusion of this cross-section from the multilevel random-effects model leads to some differences in the lower and upper population variance and coefficient confidence limits, but all three variance components for parenthood remain significant and overlapping.
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Acknowledgments
The preparation of this article was facilitated by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES Proposal #1024539) for which the second and third authors served as co-principal investigators.
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Andersson, M.A., Glass, J. & Simon, R.W. Users Beware: Variable Effects of Parenthood on Happiness Within and Across International Datasets. Soc Indic Res 115, 945–961 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-013-0244-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-013-0244-8