The Family Report 2003: Choosing Happiness?

This report examines the relationship between happiness and having children. Over the last 30 years, people in Britain have become more affluent but have not become much happier. Over the same period the birth rate has declined. We know that family has an important part to play in happiness but whether the fact that we are having fewer children is in turn connected to how happy we are in unclear.

To explore this connection we held a series of focus groups and conducted a survey of 1,500 men and women across Britain.