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

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Defining quality of care

by J. Biggs and C. Tang, Maidenhead, England,
Open University Press, 2007, 360 pp., £29.99, ISBN-13: 978-0-335-22126-4

Teaching for quality learning at university

Independent inquiry into inequalities in health

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Athina_Vlachantoni/publication/264086113_Marital_status_health_and_mortality/links/53f46bd30cf22be01c3eb4c2.pdf?disableCoverPage=true

Marital status, health and mortality

Background: frailty, a multi-dimensional geriatric syndrome, confers a high risk for falls, disability, hospitalisation and mortality. The prevalence and correlates of frailty in the UK are unknown. Methods: frailty, defined by Fried, was examined among community-dwelling young-old (64–74 years) men (n = 320) and women (n = 318) who participated in the Hertfordshire Cohort Study, UK. Results: the prevalence of frailty was 8.5% among women and 4.1% among men (P = 0.02). Among men, older age (P = 0.009), younger age of leaving education (P = 0.05), not owning/mortgaging one's home (odds ratio [OR] for frailty 3.45 [95% confidence interval {CI} 1.01–11.81], P = 0.05, in comparison with owner/mortgage occupiers) and reduced car availability (OR for frailty 3.57 per unit decrease in number of cars available [95% CI 1.32, 10.0], P = 0.01) were associated with increased odds of frailty. Among women, not owning/mortgaging one's home (P = 0.02) was associated with frailty. With the exception of car availability among men (P = 0.03), all associations were non-significant (P > 0.05) after adjustment for co-morbidity. Conclusions: frailty is not uncommon even among community-dwelling young-old men and women in the UK. There are social inequalities in frailty which appear to be mediated by co-morbidity.

Prevalence and correlates of frailty among community-dwelling older men and women: findings from the Hertfordshire Cohort Study

This paper uses work and caring history information from the British Family and Working Lives Survey (1994/5) to examine the provision of family care and its impact upon the employment and the subsequent state and private pension entitlement among mid-life men and women. Combining paid employment with care-giving was not an option for a significant minority of women with caring responsibilities in mid-life. One-in-five mid-life women who have ever had caring responsibilities reported that, upon starting caring, they stopped work altogether, and another one-in-five reported that they worked fewer hours, earned less money or could only work restricted hours. Fewer men and women who stopped work as a result of caring were members of an occupational pension scheme than other groups; and they had accumulated fewer years of contributions than their counterparts who continued working, with direct implications for their level of pension income in later life. The extension of employers' schemes to help workers balance paid work and family responsibilities would facilitate more carers remaining in the labour market, as would an explicit carers' dimension within the new ‘Working Tax Credit’. Consideration should also be given to extending credits for second tier pensions to working carers who provide care for over 16 hours a week and who earn below the lower earnings limit. This will ensure that carers who juggle low paid work and care are not penalised for working, and that their unpaid contribution to society is recognised.

Combining work and family life: the pension penalty of caring

This article reports research funded as part of the recent ESRC Growing Older initiative. The project ‘Family, Work and Quality of Life’ explored changes in economic and social roles across four birth cohorts passing through mid-life (45–59/64 years) in Britain. The relationship between multiple role responsibilities and a range of indicators of quality of life, including material resources, health and engagement in social activities were investigated. The research was based upon secondary analysis of four different surveys: the 2000 British Household Panel Study, the 1994–95 Family and Working Lives Survey, the 1985, 1990, 1995, and 2000 General Household Surveys, and the longitudinal Retirement Survey (1988/89 and 1994). A particularly interesting finding is that being ‘caught in the middle’, in terms of having simultaneous care-giving responsibilities to dependent children and frail parents whilst in paid work, has been atypical. Only one-in-nine British women, and one-in-ten British men, aged 45–49 years (born in 1941–45) occupy all three roles concurrently, but multiple role occupancy is increasing across cohorts, particularly the combination of caring and paid work. Role occupancy significantly affects the accumulation of pension entitlements (particularly second-tier pensions), with the effect that many women who have fulfilled the important social roles of carer and parent will face a low income in old age. Where adverse health outcomes were found, parental role in mid-life was most frequently associated with such poor health, suggesting that continued parental demands in mid-life may have negative health consequences.

Family, work and quality of life: Changing economic and social roles through the lifecourse

1. Mapping the territory: ageing independence and the life course, Sara Arber and Maria Evandrou. 2. 'Forgotton But Not Gone': the experience of ageing with a disability, Gerry Zarb. 3. Money and independence in old age, Gail Wilson. 4. Food consuption, social roles and personal identity, Glennys Howarth. 5. Ageing, gender and the organisation of physical activities, Kate Bennett and Kevin Morgan. 6. Lifestyles and perceptions of elderly people and old age in Bosnia and Hercegovina, John Vincent and Zelijka Mudrovcic. 7. Emotional and sexual adjustment in later life, H B Gibson. 8. The meaning of home in later life, Craig Gurney and Robin Means. 9. Housing, the life course and older people, David Clapham, Robin Means, and Moira Munro. 10. Class, caring and the life course, Sara Arber and Jay Ginn. 11. Policies and perceptions of identity service needs of elderly people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, Janet Askham, Lesley Henshaw and Maryrose Tarpey. 12. Institutional Care and the life course, Paul Higgs and Christina Victor. 13. Social security and the life course developing sensitive policy alternatives, Maria Evandrou and Jane Falkingham.

Maria Evandrou

Papers

Marital status, health and mortality

Prevalence and correlates of frailty among community-dwelling older men and women: findings from the Hertfordshire Cohort Study

Combining work and family life: the pension penalty of caring

Family, work and quality of life: Changing economic and social roles through the lifecourse

Ageing, independence and the life course