David Leonhardt interviews Bryan Caplan about his new book, Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids. Caplan:
Happiness researchers consistently find that people with kids are less happy than otherwise identical people without. The result holds up, but there’s a lot more to the story. First of all, the “depressing” effect of kids, while consistent, is small. Married-with-kids is far happier than single-without-kids, but happiness researchers rarely bemoan the plight of childless singles. Second, kids do extremely well by another plausible standard: customer satisfaction. Over 90 percent of parents say they’d make the same decision if they had a “do over,” and over two-thirds of childless adults over 40 say they wish they had kids when they had their chance.
The Dish 