Parenting is hardest in the richest countries

GlobalPost

We all know that people in Scandinavia are happy.

We've known that for a while, so while this year's World Happiness Report confirms that fact yet again, it's not exactly news.

More from GlobalPost: 18 reasons why Nordic countries are better than yours

The UN report also confirms that parenting is negatively correlated with well-being around the world — something else we already knew.

But what is news, according to the 2016 World Happiness Report, is that parenting is the hardest on those in high GDP countries, and especially so on the unemployed. 

Now, of course it's hard to be a parent when you're worried about not having a job or enough money to take care of your kids.

But why should parenting in general be harder in richer countries? 

Luca Stanca, the economist who conducted the research for the report, told Bloomberg that more study is needed to answer that question, but it may have to do with opportunity cost. 

In richer nations, "there's more to do, and greater economic and social reward for doing it," Bloomberg reports. "A kind of child-rearing fomo, then."

More from GlobalPost: 9 incredible lessons from parenting around the world

The effect is stronger for women in general, according to the report, and eases for all parents as they age. 

Overall, parenting only brought a net benefit of happiness in 36 out of 105 countries measured by the World Happiness Report.

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