Shopping for consumer credit (2003)

"Information from Human Environmental Sciences Extension.""Consumer and family economics.""This publication was revised by Joyce Cavanagh, former Consumer and Family Economics Extension specialist and Laura Reynolds, graduate assistant, Department of Consumer and Family Economics, University of Missouri-Columbia."Reprinted 9/03/2.5M

Family Economics Writ Large

Powerful currents have reshaped the structure of families over the last century. There has been (i) a dramatic drop in fertility and greater parental investment in children; (ii) a rise in married female labor-force participation; (iii) a decline in marriage and a rise in divorce; (iv) a higher degree of positive assortative mating; (v) more children living with a single mother; (vi) shifts in social norms governing premarital sex and married women\u27s roles in the labor market. Macroeconomic models explaining these aggregate trends are surveyed. The relentless flow of technological progress and its role in shaping family life are stressed

Essays in Family Economics

Programa de Doctorado en Economía por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: Nezih Guner.- Secretario: Zoë Kuehn.- Vocal: John Knowle

ESSAYS IN FAMILY ECONOMICS

The first chapter examines the effect of the number of years children spend living with a single-parent family instead of a two-parent family on children\u27s completed schooling, based on a sample of children from the PSID. To deal with the endogeneity of mothers\u27 family structure decisions, I exploit the variation across states and over time in unilateral divorce laws, unmarried fertility ratios, welfare rules, earned income tax credit rates, and labor market conditions that generate plausibly exogenous changes in mothers\u27 family structure choices. I construct a set of extensive measures for these contextual variables and use them as instruments to estimate a child\u27s human capital production function. Instrumental variable estimation indicates that one additional year spent in a single-parent family during childhood (ages 0-15) can cause a loss of 0.145 years in schooling. This result implies that the differences in family structure experiences over the early life course between white and nonwhite children can explain roughly 76% of the gap in educational attainment between the two groups. On the other hand, ordinary least-squares estimation only suggests 13%. Children born to unmarried parents may receive lower human capital investments in youth, and therefore may be less likely to finish high school or to attend college. The second chapter explores these effects empirically using state level data over the period 1940-2000. We find that a steady-state increase in unmarried fertility ratio of 100 per 1,000 child births could lead to a 4.6 percent drop in high school graduation rate and a steady-state 4.2 percent decline in secondary school enrollment in the long-run. This result is important since Heckman and Lafontain (2010) found that since the late 1960s the high school graduation rate has fallen by 4-5 percentage points, despite the growing wage differentials between high school graduates and dropouts. Our analysis implies that the rise in unmarried fertility predicts a ceteris paribus drop in high school graduation rate of about 6.6% in the same time period, thus provides an important explanation for the dropout problem in recent decades.. Moreover, our results indicate a very weak link between abortion and child education, in contrast to the strong effect of abortion on crime documented in the literature

Marital Happiness and Family Economics

Economics has long been the study of maximizing production, minimizing cost, and analyzing distributions, but it was not until recently that the field of economics added the social institution of the family and subjective well being to its list. What is being expounded upon within this discussion is how marital happiness affects family economics. The question begins with how marriage affects the basic micro model of economics: utility, and in turn how marital happiness affects economic decisions made by the family, such as the amount of leisure and goods to consume. Economic issues already analyzed within the family include joint and independent utility functions, the joint production function, distribution of economic resources, exiting constraints and more. The addition to the economic community that this discussion will be making hinges on a closer look at marriages shared goods; a good that can only be consumed within marriage, either produced by one spouse and consumed by the other or shared by both. From the shared good, we can analyze if happiness within marriage changes choices between shared goods, leisure, and private consumption, which in turn affects the personal or joint utility function when married. The purpose of studying happiness within marriage for an economist when looking at it from the bigger picture is that it adds insights into the complex economic institution that would not otherwise be observable. The insights include how the complicated interplay of the resources allocated to shared goods and the leisure to consume them, is exchanged between private consumption. So, marital happiness, as it affects utility produced within marriage, can influence a variety of decisions. These broad definitions of goods once analyzed generically can define more specific issues such as economies of scale, income transfers, labor force participation decisions, human capital investments, and large ticket items such as a house or arguably children. In effect a happy marriage is not just interesting to sociologists and those who are married but gives insights into economic issues as well. The layout of this paper will be as follows. In the second section there will be a literature review to highlight important points from which to construct the model and add to the discussion. In the third section the model will be developed and used to express how marital happiness changes family economics. In section four I will look at the data and its econometric results to support the model and then conclude. Appendix B will outline the idea of happiness as an endogenous decision

Does Mother Nature Punish Rotten Kids?

This paper studies the evolutionary game theory of parent-offspring conflict. It revisits a question posed by Gary Becker in economics and Richard Alexander in biology, namely "when do children act in accord with the reproductive interests of their parents?"biology evolutionary game theory parent-offspring conflict family economics

Marital Happiness and Family Economics

Economics has long been the study of maximizing production, minimizing cost, and analyzing distributions, but it was not until recently that the field of economics added the social institution of the family and subjective well being to its list. What is being expounded upon within this discussion is how marital happiness affects family economics. The question begins with how marriage affects the basic micro model of economics: utility, and in turn how marital happiness affects economic decisions made by the family, such as the amount of leisure and goods to consume. Economic issues already analyzed within the family include joint and independent utility functions, the joint production function, distribution of economic resources, exiting constraints and more. The addition to the economic community that this discussion will be making hinges on a closer look at marriages shared goods; a good that can only be consumed within marriage, either produced by one spouse and consumed by the other or shared by both. From the shared good, we can analyze if happiness within marriage changes choices between shared goods, leisure, and private consumption, which in turn affects the personal or joint utility function when married. The purpose of studying happiness within marriage for an economist when looking at it from the bigger picture is that it adds insights into the complex economic institution that would not otherwise be observable. The insights include how the complicated interplay of the resources allocated to shared goods and the leisure to consume them, is exchanged between private consumption. So, marital happiness, as it affects utility produced within marriage, can influence a variety of decisions. These broad definitions of goods once analyzed generically can define more specific issues such as economies of scale, income transfers, labor force participation decisions, human capital investments, and large ticket items such as a house or arguably children. In effect a happy marriage is not just interesting to sociologists and those who are married but gives insights into economic issues as well. The layout of this paper will be as follows. In the second section there will be a literature review to highlight important points from which to construct the model and add to the discussion. In the third section the model will be developed and used to express how marital happiness changes family economics. In section four I will look at the data and its econometric results to support the model and then conclude. Appendix B will outline the idea of happiness as an endogenous decision

Consumer reaction to the UPC*

"File: Family Economics and Management, 11/77/8M""By this time, consumers are familiar with the small block of light and dark bars called the Universal Product Code that appears on almost every item sold in supermarkets. (See box for further information.) Yet, consumers may question if the code (UPC) will benefit them."--First paragraph.Karen Stein (Family Economics and Management Specialist)Includes bibliographical reference