The drop of children per woman was strongest for childless women (i.e. first births) than for women who already had at least one child (subsequent births) (Lanzieri, 2013, Goldstein et al., Clearly, countries have performed differently as important determinants of fertility such as family policies, unemployment and job security vary greatly across countries (Goldstein etal., We use round 3, namely 2006-2007, as our benchmark pre-crisis (i.e. the base year), unfortunately, countries for which no data for round 3 was available had to be dropped (such as Greece, Iceland and Italy).21 As these are some of the most affected countries we can hypothesize that the impact is underestimated. The indicators reviewed in this section provide a subjective assessment or perception of their personal situation as well as the society they live in. As discussed in Bradshaw etal. ( Happiness captures how respondents feel (emotionally) about their life, whereas life satisfaction provides a more cognitive assessment of life (Eurofound, 2003).