Value and costs of children to parents

The purpose of this study was to explore the motivational factors that lie behind the desire for children. In particular, the needs that children satisfy, as well as the costs, both emotional and financial, were assessed and analyzed. The Value and Costs of Children to Parents data set is a subset of data from the Cross-National Value of Children Study, a cooperative research project conducted in 1975 involving investigators from eight countries: Indonesia, Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, and the United States.

Investigators of the Cross-National Value of Children Study were concerned primarily with the psychological satisfactions that children are perceived as providing for their parents, and the relationship between these and fertility attitudes and behavior. The goal of the study was to understand better what needs children are perceived as satisfying, how the availability of alternative sources of satisfaction affect these views, and how the particular needs translate to the number of children desired.

The Murray Center holds computer-accessible data from the United States sample, consisting of 1,569 women and 456 of their husbands.