A new report released by the EU statistics branch revealed that according to findings the happiest people in Europe are those with bigger families.
Two thirds of people with families of three children or more considered themselves to be more happy than people living in smaller families. Not only are they more satisfied with their lives, the study also shows them to have stronger personal relationships than others.
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Eurostat report aims to investigate the quality of life of European residents. The survey was carried out by asking participants to answer a series of questions by scoring their wellbeing out of 10.
Contributing factors to participants giving higher happiness scores are unsurprising with participants citing good health, relationships and living conditions as having impact on their wellbeing, while unemployment resulted in a lower happiness rating.
The study found that 66.8 per cent of homes with three children reported feeling happy "all the time" or "most of the time" over the four weeks before they took the survey. While just under two thirds of smaller families gave these responses.
From this it could be argued that the more kids we have the happier we'll be. Though one person's happiness rating differs wildly from another's. My granny had eight kids. What was her happiness rating? She seemed grand. I imagine if I'd asked her for a happiness rating she would've laughed at me. I'm pretty sure my granny didn't believe in "wellbeing" she was too busy trying to get eight kids to raise each other – a tactic she divulged after one of her customary G&Ts (she may be my hero).
Recent statistics show that the average number of children Irish mums are having has fallen in recent years to an average of 1.9 per mother.
So, should we be getting busy to get happy?
