IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/don/donwpa/117.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Italian happy parents In Twitter

Author

Listed:
  • Letizia Mencarini
  • Delia Irazú Hernández-Farías
  • Mirko Lai
  • Viviana Patti
  • Emilio Sulis
  • Daniele Vignoli

Abstract

his article explores opinions and semantic orientation around fertility and parenthood by scrutinizing filtered Italian Twitter data. We propose a novel methodological framework relying on Natural Language Processing techniques for text analysis, which is aimed at extracting sentiments from texts. A manual annotation for exploring sentiment and attitudes to fertility and parenthood was applied to Twitter data. The resulting set of tweets (corpus) was analysed through sentiment and emotion lexicons in order to highlight how affective language is used in this domain. It emerges that parents express a generally positive attitude towards their children and being and become parents, but quite negative sentiments on children’s future, politics and fertility and also parental behaviour. Exploiting geographical information from tweets, we find a significant correlation between the prevalence of positive sentiments about parenthood and macro-regional indicators for both life satisfaction and fertility levels.

Suggested Citation

  • Letizia Mencarini & Delia Irazú Hernández-Farías & Mirko Lai & Viviana Patti & Emilio Sulis & Daniele Vignoli, 2018. "Italian happy parents In Twitter," Working Papers 117, "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (DONDENA), Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi.
    • Handle: RePEc:don:donwpa:117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: ftp://ftp.dondena.unibocconi.it/WorkingPapers/Dondena_WP117.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hans-Peter Kohler & Letizia Mencarini, 2016. "The Parenthood Happiness Puzzle: An Introduction to Special Issue," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 32(3), pages 327-338, August.
    2. Rajagopal, 2014. "The Human Factors," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Architecting Enterprise, chapter 9, pages 225-249, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-01383781 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Sophie Cetre & Andrew E. Clark & Claudia Senik, 2016. "Happy People Have Children: Choice and Self-Selection into Parenthood," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 32(3), pages 445-473, August.
    5. Christian Reimsbach-Kounatze, 2015. "The Proliferation of “Big Data” and Implications for Official Statistics and Statistical Agencies: A Preliminary Analysis," OECD Digital Economy Papers 245, OECD Publishing.
    6. Mikko Myrskylä & Rachel Margolis, 2014. "Happiness: Before and After the Kids," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(5), pages 1843-1866, October.
    7. Ron Lesthaeghe, 2010. "The Unfolding Story of the Second Demographic Transition," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 36(2), pages 211-251, June.
    8. Rachel Margolis & Mikko Myrskylä, 2011. "A Global Perspective on Happiness and Fertility," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 37(1), pages 29-56, March.
    9. Gunter J. Hitsch & Ali Hortaçsu & Dan Ariely, 2010. "Matching and Sorting in Online Dating," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 130-163, March.
    10. Emilio Zagheni & Ingmar Weber, 2015. "Demographic research with non-representative internet data," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 36(1), pages 13-25, April.
    11. Peter McDonald, 2013. "Societal foundations for explaining fertility: Gender equity," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 28(34), pages 981-994.
    12. Thomas Hansen, 2012. "Parenthood and Happiness: a Review of Folk Theories Versus Empirical Evidence," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 108(1), pages 29-64, August.
    13. Mikko Myrskylä & Rachel Margolis, 2014. "Happiness - before and after the Kids," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 642, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fauth, Rebecca C. & Winestone, Jessica Greenstone, 2021. "Home visiting and justice system collaborations: Two Programs’ approaches to advocating for justice system-involved parents," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Letizia Mencarini & Delia Irazú Hernández Farías & Mirko Lai & Viviana Patti & Emilio Sulis & Daniele Vignoli, 2019. "Happy parents’ tweets: An exploration of Italian Twitter data using sentiment analysis," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 40(25), pages 693-724.
    2. Letizia Mencarini & Daniele Vignoli & Tugba Zeydanli & Jungho Kim, 2018. "Life satisfaction favors reproduction. The universal positive effect of life satisfaction on childbearing in contemporary low fertility countries," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(12), pages 1-19, December.
    3. Matthias Pollmann-Schult, 2018. "Parenthood and Life Satisfaction in Europe: The Role of Family Policies and Working Time Flexibility," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 34(3), pages 387-411, August.
    4. Pierluigi Conzo & Giulia Fuochi & Letizia Mencarini, 2017. "Fertility and Life Satisfaction in Rural Ethiopia," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(4), pages 1331-1351, August.
    5. Mikucka, Malgorzata, 2015. "How does parenthood affect life satisfaction in Russia?," MPRA Paper 65376, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Jan Priebe, 2020. "Quasi-experimental evidence for the causal link between fertility and subjective well-being," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(3), pages 839-882, July.
    7. Marco Le Moglie & Letizia Mencarini & Chiara Rapallini, 2019. "Does income moderate the satisfaction of becoming a parent? In Germany it does and depends on education," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 32(3), pages 915-952, July.
    8. Giulia M. Dotti Sani, 2022. "The Intrinsic Value of Childcare: Positive Returns of Childcare Time on Parents’ Well-Being and Life Satisfaction in Italy," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(5), pages 1901-1921, June.
    9. Zeynep B. Ugur, 2020. "Does Having Children Bring Life Satisfaction in Europe?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 1385-1406, April.
    10. Arnstein Aassve & Francesca Luppi & Letizia Mencarini, 2021. "A first glance into the black box of life satisfaction surrounding childbearing," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 307-338, September.
    11. Yu, Shuye & Postepska, Agnieszka, 2020. "Flexible Jobs Make Parents Happier: Evidence from Australia," IZA Discussion Papers 13700, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Francesca Luppi & Letizia Mencarini, 2018. "Parents’ subjective well-being after their first child and declining fertility expectations," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 39(9), pages 285-314.
    13. Anna Matysiak & Letizia Mencarini & Daniele Vignoli, 2016. "Work–Family Conflict Moderates the Relationship Between Childbearing and Subjective Well-Being," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 32(3), pages 355-379, August.
    14. David G. Blanchflower & Andrew E. Clark, 2021. "Children, unhappiness and family finances," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(2), pages 625-653, April.
    15. Jona Schellekens, 2019. "Does the association between children and happiness vary by level of religiosity? The evidence from Israel," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 41(5), pages 103-124.
    16. Petra Rattay & Elena von der Lippe, 2020. "Association between Living with Children and the Health and Health Behavior of Women and Men. Are There Differences by Age? Results of the “German Health Update” (GEDA) Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(9), pages 1-19, May.
    17. Małgorzata Mikucka & Ester Rizzi, 2020. "The Parenthood and Happiness Link: Testing Predictions from Five Theories," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 36(2), pages 337-361, April.
    18. Anna Matysiak & Letizia Mencarini & Daniele Vignoli, 2015. "Work-family Conflict Moderates the Impact of Childbearing on Subjective Well-Being," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 435, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    19. repec:agr:journl:v:2(602):y:2015:i:2(602):p:285-292 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Rachel Margolis & Mikko Myrskyla, 2016. "Children’s Sex and the Happiness of Parents," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 32(3), pages 403-420, August.
    21. Bruno Arpino & Jordi Gumà & Albert JuliÃ, 2021. "Deviations From Standard Family Histories and Subjective Wellbeing at Older Ages," Econometrics Working Papers Archive 2021_16, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti".

    More about this item

    Keywords

    sentiment analysis; social media; fertility; parenthood; subjective well-being; linguistic corpora;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:don:donwpa:117. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Amy Johnson (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.dondena.unibocconi.it/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.