Unequal Happiness Gains from Summer Breaks: Evidence from European Parents

This paper examines how summer school holidays are associated with parents’ happiness across 16 European countries. Using harmonized data from the European Social Survey (2023--2025) combined with detailed national school calendars, we compare the well-being of parents and non-parents interviewed during and outside the summer break. While non-parents show a clear seasonal increase in happiness, this boost is smaller for parents and virtually absent for mothers, particularly in countries with medium or long summer breaks. The gap widens with the number of children and remains after accounting for socio-demographic factors, household labor division, and time trends. Robustness checks, including models with country-specific year and month trends and placebo tests, confirm these patterns. Cross-country differences in the ``parental summer gap'' are substantial but are not related to macro-level factors such as GDP or family spending. These findings underscore the additional pressures associated with long summer breaks—especially for mothers—and highlight the potential value of policies that shorten school holidays, expand affordable childcare, and promote a fairer division of care work.