A Treatise on the Family, Enlarged EditionHarvard University Press, 30. 6. 2009 - Počet stran: 440 Imagine each family as a kind of little factory--a multiperson unit producing meals, health, skills, children, and self-esteem from market goods and the time, skills, and knowledge of its members. This is only one of the remarkable concepts explored by Gary Becker in his landmark work on the family. Becker applies economic theory to the most sensitive and fateful personal decisions, such as choosing a spouse or having children. He uses the basic economic assumptions of maximizing behavior, stable preferences, arid equilibria in explicit or implicit markets to analyze the allocation of time to child care as well as to careers, to marriage and divorce in polygynous as well as monogamous societies, to the increase and decrease of wealth from one generation to another. The consideration of the family from this perspective has profound theoretical and practical implications. For example, Becker's analysis of assortative mating can be used to study matching processes generally. Becker extends the powerful tools of economic analysis to problems once considered the province of the sociologist, the anthropologist, and the historian. The obligation of these scholars to take account of his work thus constitutes an important step in the unification of the social sciences. A Treatise on the Family will have an impact on public policy as well. Becker shows that social welfare programs have significant effects on the allocation of resources within families. For example, social security taxes tend to reduce the amount of resources children give to their aged parents. The implications of these findings are obvious and far-reaching. With the publication of this extraordinary hook, the family moves to the forefront of the research agenda in the social sciences. |
Obsah
1 | |
1 SinglePerson Households | 20 |
2 Division of Labor in Households and Families | 30 |
3 Polygamy and Monogamy in Marriage Markets | 80 |
4 Assortative Mating in Marriage Markets | 108 |
5 The Demand for Children | 135 |
6 Family Background and the Opportunities of Children | 179 |
7 Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility | 201 |
8 Altruism in the Family | 277 |
9 Families in Nonhuman Species | 307 |
10 Imperfect Information Marriage and Divorce | 324 |
11 The Evolution of the Family | 342 |
Bibliography | 383 |
411 | |
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allocation altruism analysis assets assortative mating assume average Becker behavior beneficiary bequests bride prices Chapter chil child coefficient commodities consumption contribution cost decline depends distribution division of labor divorce rates dren earnings Economic effect efficient endowed luck energy equal equation exceeds family income females fertility growth household household production function human capital implies income of children increase indifference curves inequality interaction interest rates intergenerational mobility investments in children It+1 labor force participation less lower males marginal product marginal utility marital market luck marriage market married women maximize negative nonhuman capital number of children number of wives optimal output percent persons polyandry polygyny positive propensity to invest quantity and quality raise rates of return reduced regression relative returns to scale Rotten Kid Theorem selfish shadow price spent substitution Theorem tion traits United utility function variables wage rates wealth ᎧᏃ