ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the two concepts, benefits and costs of additional children. It considers in a bird’s eye view various approaches to estimate children costs, the concept of well-being and its operationalization, and focuses on the Leyden approach. The Leyden approach points always to the result that having children reduces welfare. The chapter argues that the decision to take a child is influenced by a calculation where additional benefits are compared with the additional costs. The first basic presumption is that the verbal labels “very bad”, and “good” convey the same emotional meaning to all respondents. More precisely a child may cause a monetary cost increase and a non-monetary benefit. The non-monetary benefit may be negatively valued for those who are child-haters. The chapter shows that people are able to operationalize in money terms both concepts of benefits and costs related with children.
