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A Treatise on the Family
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 S. 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 book, the family moves to the forefront of the research agenda in the social sciences.
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 book, the family moves to the forefront of the research agenda in the social sciences.
440 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 31, 2011
A book by Nobel Prize winner in economics, Gary Becker, famous for having extended the scope of microeconomic analysis to new spheres of human behavior and society. In this book, Gary Becker introduces a market-based and efficiency-oriented analysis of the family, applying it to marriage and fertility decisions, inter-gender relations and parents-children relations. An analysis that is not hard to refute if one adopts a rights-based approach to morality and ethics. Kind of shocking!
December 28, 2012
With this book, Becker makes a claim to not only being one of the century's greatest economists, but also one of its greatest sociologists. This book has several fascinating theorems that explain family dynamics in a way that does not rely on imprecise formulations or psychoanalysis. Yes, some of it gets into dense logical proofs, but these are to solidify the argument. It is a must read, and if you don't have time, a must browse. It is the jumping point for the future of solid microeconomics that explain how humans make decisions.
May 18, 2018
I fundamentally don't like Becker because he is one of the key architects of neoliberal cultural politics, which I find incredibly repressive and exploitative in the guise of providing freedom of choice in a non-coercive market space (which is a fantasy that represses the actual coercion on which such societies continue to depend). So that is my opening disclaimer. That being said, I have two main critiques of this book, along with some caveats to them.
First, the analysis here is fundamentally flawed because Becker begins from the empirically unsupportable position that human beings always seek principally to maximize their own economic self-interest and that they will always have clear knowledge of how to do this effectively (this is the basic technocratic assumption of neoliberal economic "science" and without this assumption the entire world view collapses into nonsense). Becker actually admits this assumption in the Preface, writing that the economic approach "now assumes that individuals maximize their utility from basic preferences that do not change rapidly over time, and that the behavior of of different individuals is coordinated by explicit and implicit markets" (ix). Essentially, the problem with the assumptions of the economic approach is that they entirely reduce human beings and human behavior to transactions within a market driven by the attempt to get the maximum value (in whatever sense that happens to be--monetary, happiness, fame, fruit, etc.). This is not necessarily an inaccurate way of understanding some human behavior, but when it is taken as the ONLY way of conceptualizing human behavior then the models on constructs of how humans interact are seriously flawed from an empirical standpoint. For instance, Becker's assertion that men and women bring equal value to a marriage, or that marriage is based on the equilibrium of value generated between the spouses, completely ignores the patriarchal power dynamics documented in feminist analysis of marriage as a social structure (which had already been theorized to some extent by the time Becker published the book in 1981).
Second, Becker's text is incredibly difficult to actually read because it is run through with algebraic formulae that ostensibly prove his claims. To be fair, he also claims in the Preface that this is not a book written for laypeople, that it is for economists who he expects should be able to comprehend the formulae (x). However, I think the need to reduce everything to an algebraic equation (making the arguments substantially less comprehensible, in my opinion) is a smokescreen giving this book a scientific veneer, when in actuality the formulae are largely based on unsupported assumptions and sometimes even assertions for which Becker provides no evidence then later takes to be proven principles. One of the critiques I've seen elsewhere of the technocratic neoliberal tradition is that it attempts to present its findings, as often as possible, in "scientific" terms as a way of building an ethos that the quality of the analysis doesn't necessarily earn, and I see that in action here.
First, the analysis here is fundamentally flawed because Becker begins from the empirically unsupportable position that human beings always seek principally to maximize their own economic self-interest and that they will always have clear knowledge of how to do this effectively (this is the basic technocratic assumption of neoliberal economic "science" and without this assumption the entire world view collapses into nonsense). Becker actually admits this assumption in the Preface, writing that the economic approach "now assumes that individuals maximize their utility from basic preferences that do not change rapidly over time, and that the behavior of of different individuals is coordinated by explicit and implicit markets" (ix). Essentially, the problem with the assumptions of the economic approach is that they entirely reduce human beings and human behavior to transactions within a market driven by the attempt to get the maximum value (in whatever sense that happens to be--monetary, happiness, fame, fruit, etc.). This is not necessarily an inaccurate way of understanding some human behavior, but when it is taken as the ONLY way of conceptualizing human behavior then the models on constructs of how humans interact are seriously flawed from an empirical standpoint. For instance, Becker's assertion that men and women bring equal value to a marriage, or that marriage is based on the equilibrium of value generated between the spouses, completely ignores the patriarchal power dynamics documented in feminist analysis of marriage as a social structure (which had already been theorized to some extent by the time Becker published the book in 1981).
Second, Becker's text is incredibly difficult to actually read because it is run through with algebraic formulae that ostensibly prove his claims. To be fair, he also claims in the Preface that this is not a book written for laypeople, that it is for economists who he expects should be able to comprehend the formulae (x). However, I think the need to reduce everything to an algebraic equation (making the arguments substantially less comprehensible, in my opinion) is a smokescreen giving this book a scientific veneer, when in actuality the formulae are largely based on unsupported assumptions and sometimes even assertions for which Becker provides no evidence then later takes to be proven principles. One of the critiques I've seen elsewhere of the technocratic neoliberal tradition is that it attempts to present its findings, as often as possible, in "scientific" terms as a way of building an ethos that the quality of the analysis doesn't necessarily earn, and I see that in action here.
June 25, 2023
A treatise on the family (Gary Becker 1981)
1.Expectations about divorce are partly self-fulfilling because a higher expected probability of divorce reduces investments in specific capital and thereby raises the actual probability. Why do some persons marry outside their religion, race, age, or educational class, when mixed marriages have much higher probabilities of divorce? These individuals do not appear to be ignorant of the risk. They have fewer children and in other ways act as if they anticipate a higher probability of divorce.
2.I suggest that marriages fail early primarily because of imperfect information in marriage markets and the accumulation of better information during marriage. Imperfect information can often be disregarded without much loss in understanding, but it is the essence of divorce, search in the marriage market, contributions by children to elderly parents, a good reputation, and other behavior. For example, participants in marriage markets hardly know their own interests and capabilities, let alone the dependability, sexual compatibility, and other traits of potential spouses.
3.Divorce is less likely later in the marriage for the additional reason that capital accumulates and becomes more valuable if a marriage stays intact ("marital-specific" capital). Children are the prime example, especially young children.
4.Yet divorced women have remarried more slowly than divorced men even when divorced at young ages. They almost always receive custody of children, a factor that discourages remarriage
5.Women with higher earnings gain less from marriage than other women do because higher earnings reduce the demand for children and the advantages of the sexual division of labor in marriage. Therefore, women with higher earnings should be more prone to divorce
6.Persons who are divorced because they are untrustworthy or quarrelsome are not attractive prospects in the remarriage market
1.Expectations about divorce are partly self-fulfilling because a higher expected probability of divorce reduces investments in specific capital and thereby raises the actual probability. Why do some persons marry outside their religion, race, age, or educational class, when mixed marriages have much higher probabilities of divorce? These individuals do not appear to be ignorant of the risk. They have fewer children and in other ways act as if they anticipate a higher probability of divorce.
2.I suggest that marriages fail early primarily because of imperfect information in marriage markets and the accumulation of better information during marriage. Imperfect information can often be disregarded without much loss in understanding, but it is the essence of divorce, search in the marriage market, contributions by children to elderly parents, a good reputation, and other behavior. For example, participants in marriage markets hardly know their own interests and capabilities, let alone the dependability, sexual compatibility, and other traits of potential spouses.
3.Divorce is less likely later in the marriage for the additional reason that capital accumulates and becomes more valuable if a marriage stays intact ("marital-specific" capital). Children are the prime example, especially young children.
4.Yet divorced women have remarried more slowly than divorced men even when divorced at young ages. They almost always receive custody of children, a factor that discourages remarriage
5.Women with higher earnings gain less from marriage than other women do because higher earnings reduce the demand for children and the advantages of the sexual division of labor in marriage. Therefore, women with higher earnings should be more prone to divorce
6.Persons who are divorced because they are untrustworthy or quarrelsome are not attractive prospects in the remarriage market
to-keep-reference
June 1, 2016Comentado en Revolución de la Riqueza Pág.123
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews