A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

Statistical Analysis with Missing Data

Many surveys of the U.S. household population are experiencing higher refusal rates. Nonresponse can, but need not, induce nonresponse bias in survey estimates. Recent empirical findings illustrate cases when the linkage between nonresponse rates and nonresponse biases is absent. Despite this, professional standards continue to urge high response rates. Statistical expressions of nonresponse bias can be translated into causal models to guide hypotheses about when nonresponse. causes bias. Alternative designs to measure nonresponse bias exist, providing different but incomplete information about the nature of the bias. A synthesis of research studies estimating nonresponse bias shows the bias often present. A logical question at this moment in history is what advantage probability sample surveys have if they suffer from high nonresponse rates. Since postsurvey adjustment for nonresponse requires auxiliary variables, the answer depends on the nature of the design and the quality of the auxiliary variables.

Nonresponse Rates and Nonresponse Bias in Household Surveys

The Social Psychology of Groups. J. W Thibaut & H. H. Kelley. New York: alley, 1959. The team of Thibaut and Kelley goes back to 1946 when, after serving in different units of the armed services psychology program, the authors joined the Research Center for Group Dynamics, first at M.LT and then at the University of Michigan. Their continued association eventuated in appointments as fellows at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 19561957. It is during these years that their collaboration resulted in the publication of The Social Psychology of Groups. The book was designed to "bring order and coherence to present-day research in interpersonal relations and group functioning." To accomplish this aim, the authors introduced, defined, and illustrated basic concepts in an effort to explain the simplest of social phenomena, the two-person relationship. These basic principles and concepts were then employed to illuminate larger problems and more complex social relationships and to examine the significance of such concepts as roles, norm, power, group cohesiveness, and status. The lasting legacy of this book is derived from the fact that the concepts and principles discussed therein serve as a foundation for one of the dominant conceptual frameworks in the field of family studies today-the social exchange framework. Specifically, much of our contemporary thinking about the process of interpersonal attraction and about how individuals evaluate their close relationships has been influenced by the theory and concepts introduced in The Social Psychology of Groups. Today, as a result of Thibaut and Kelley, we think of interpersonal attraction as resulting from the unique valence of driving and restraining forces, rewards and costs, subjectively thought to be available from a specific relationship and its competing alternatives. We understand, as well, that relationships are evaluated through complex and subjectively based comparative processes. As a result, when we think about assessing the degree to which individuals are satisfied with their relationships, we take into consideration the fact that individuals differ in terms of the importance they attribute to different aspects of a relationship (e.g., financial security, sexual fulfillment, companionship). We also take into consideration the fact that individuals differ in terms of the levels of rewards and costs that they believe are realistically obtainable and deserved from a relationship. In addition, as a result of Thibaut and Kelley's theoretical focus on the concept of dependence and the interrelationship between attraction and dependence, there has evolved within the field of family studies a deeper appreciation for the complexities and variability found within relationships. Individuals are dependent on their relationships, according to Thibaut and Kelley, when the outcomes derived from the existing relationship exceed those perceived to be available in competing alternatives. Individuals who are highly dependent on their relationships are less likely to act to end their relationships. This dependence and the stability it engenders may or may not be voluntary, depending on the degree to which individuals are attracted to and satisfied with their relationships. When individuals are both attracted to and dependent on their relationships, they can be thought of as voluntarily participating in their relationship. That is, they are likely to commit themselves to the partner and relationship and actively work for its continuance. Thibaut and Kelley termed those relationships characterized by low levels of satisfaction and high levels of dependence "nonvoluntary relationships. …

The Social Psychology of Groups

(1991). Applied Linear Regression Models. Journal of Quality Technology: Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 76-77.

Applied Linear Regression Models

Researchers and health specialists are increasingly obtaining information on chronic illnesses from self-reports. This study validates self-reports of two major health conditions, hypertension and diabetes, based on a recently fielded survey in Taiwan (SEBAS, 2000). The survey includes both self-reported health information and a physical examination for a large, nationally representative sample of respondents aged 54 and older. Average blood pressure readings, laboratory measures of glycosylated hemoglobin and information on whether the respondent was taking medication for hypertension or diabetes are used to validate respondents' reports of high blood pressure and diabetes. The resulting comparisons reveal that self-reports vastly underestimate the prevalence of hypertension (by almost 50 percent), but yield a reasonably accurate estimate of the prevalence of diabetes (a sensitivity of 83 percent). Significant correlates of the accuracy of the self-reports include age, education, time of the most recent health exam, and cognitive function.

Evaluating the Quality of Self-Reports of Hypertension and Diabetes

Evaluating the quality of self-reports of hypertension and diabetes

Purpose Our study documents how the divorce rate among persons aged 50 and older has changed between 1990 and 2010 and identifies the sociodemographic correlates of divorce among today’s middle-aged and older adults Design and Method We used data from the 1990 US Vital Statistics Report and the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS) to examine the change in the divorce rate over time ACS data were analyzed to determine the sociodemographic correlates of divorce Results The divorce rate among adults aged 50 and older doubled between 1990 and 2010 Roughly 1 in 4 divorces in 2010 occurred to persons aged 50 and older Demographic characteristics, economic resources, and the marital biography were associated with the risk of divorce in 2010 The rate of divorce was 25 times higher for those in remarriages versus first marriages, whereas the divorce rate declined as marital duration rose Implications The traditional focus of gerontological research on widowhood must be expanded to include divorce as another form of marital dissolution Over 600,000 people aged 50 and older got divorced in 2010 but little is known about the predictors and consequences of divorces that occur during middle and later life

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The gray divorce revolution: rising divorce among middle-aged and older adults, 1990-2010.

Les non reponses peuvent induire, quand elles sont nombreuses, des erreurs substantielles dans les estimations obtenues dans les enquetes. Ce biais introduit est difficile a evaluer et cela d'autant plus que les chercheurs ont souvent peu d'informations sur les non-repondants. Les AA. presente deux methodes ad hoc pour reduire ce biais. La premiere suppose que les non-repondants sont identiques et qu'ils peuvent se repartir proportionnellement entre les differents types de reponses. La seconde suppose qu'ils sont heterogenes et qu'ils se regroupent en categories, en classes dont il faut isoler les caracteristiques. Ils presentent un certain nombre de donnees collectees aux Etats-Unis, dans le Wisconsin, conernant l'aide financiere apportee par les parents aux enfants et s'efforcent d'evaluer les deux methodes

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Using survey participants to estimate the impact of nonparticipation

We examine resource allocation in step-households, in the United States and South Africa, to test whether child investments vary according to economic and genetic bonds between parent and child. We used 18 years of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and compare food expenditure by family type, holding constant household size, age composition and income. We find that in those households in which a child is raised by an adoptive, step or foster mother, less is spent on food. We cannot reject the hypothesis that the effect of replacing a biological child with a non- biological child is the same, whether the non-biological child is an adoptive, step or foster child of the mother. In South Africa, where we can disaggregate food consumption more finely, we find that when a child's biological mother is the head or spouse of the head of household, the household spends significantly more on food, in particular on milk and fruit and vegetables, and significantly less on tobacco and alcohol. The genetic tie to the child, and not any anticipated future economic tie, appears to be the tie that binds.

I-Fen Lin

Papers

Evaluating the Quality of Self-Reports of Hypertension and Diabetes

Evaluating the quality of self-reports of hypertension and diabetes

The gray divorce revolution: rising divorce among middle-aged and older adults, 1990-2010.

Using survey participants to estimate the impact of nonparticipation

How Hungry is the Selfish Gene