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Women who don't want children may be smarter than their maternal counterparts.

New research reveals a clear correlation between intelligence and childlessness.  Scientists say that latest findings suggest that having a higher IQ may decrease a woman's desire of becoming a mother.

Lead researcher Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and her team found that that a woman's urge to have children decreases by a quarter for every 15 extra IQ points.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from the UK's National Child Development Study.  Even after accounting for factors like economics and education, the findings revealed that the more intelligent the woman, the less likely she was to be a mother, according to the Daily Mail.

Another study conducted by researchers at the University of York found that the idea that happiness comes from having children is deceptive.  Experts say these findings might offer another clue to why more and more women are choosing not to have children.

"Social scientists have found almost zero association between having children and happiness," lead researcher Dr. Nattavudh Powdthavee said in a news release. "In a recent study of British adults for example we found that parents and non-parents reported the same levels of life satisfaction. Other studies from Europe and the USA found that parents report significantly lower levels of satisfaction than people who haven't had children."

Researchers explained that people tend to focus more on the good things about parenthood. Powdthavee said this may be because people believe that the rare but meaningful experiences like a child's first smile or seeing them get married will give them massive and long-lasting increases in happiness.

"But in reality, we rarely think about these big experiences on a daily basis, simply because they do not occur to us every day," he explained.

"Instead, parents spend much of their time attending to the very core processes of childcare - problems at school, cooking and laundry - which are much more frequent but a lot less salient events. And it is these small but negative experiences that are more likely to impact on our day-to-day levels of happiness and life satisfaction," Powdthavee concluded.