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

Offering a unifying theoretical perspective not readily available in any other text, this innovative guide to econometrics uses simple geometrical arguments to develop students' intuitive understanding of basic and advanced topics, emphasizing throughout the practical applications of modern theory and nonlinear techniques of estimation. One theme of the text is the use of artificial regressions for estimation, reference, and specification testing of nonlinear models, including diagnostic tests for parameter constancy, serial correlation, heteroscedasticity, and other types of mis-specification. Explaining how estimates can be obtained and tests can be carried out, the authors go beyond a mere algebraic description to one that can be easily translated into the commands of a standard econometric software package. Covering an unprecedented range of problems with a consistent emphasis on those that arise in applied work, this accessible and coherent guide to the most vital topics in econometrics today is indispensable for advanced students of econometrics and students of statistics interested in regression and related topics. It will also suit practising econometricians who want to update their skills. Flexibly designed to accommodate a variety of course levels, it offers both complete coverage of the basic material and separate chapters on areas of specialized interest.

Estimation and Inference in Econometrics

—This article asserts that the theory of emerging adulthood is a useful way of conceptualizing the lives of people from their late teens to their mid- to late 20s in industrialized societies. The place of emerging adulthood within the adult life course is discussed. The weaknesses of previous terms for this age period are examined, and emerging adulthood is argued to be preferable as a new term for a new phenomenon. With respect to the question of whether emerging adulthood is experienced positively or negatively by most people, it is argued that it is positive for most people but entails developmental challenges that may be difficult and there is great heterogeneity, with some emerging adults experiencing serious problems. With respect to the question of whether or not emerging adulthood is good for society, it is argued that claims of the dangers of emerging adulthood are overblown, but emerging adulthood is probably a mixed blessing for society.

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Emerging Adulthood: What Is It, and What Is It Good For?

There is an extensive theoretical literature that postulates a tradeoff between child quantity and quality within a family. However, there is little causal evidence that speaks to this theory. Using a rich dataset on the entire population of Norway over an extended period of time, we examine the effects of family size and birth order on the educational attainment of children. While we find a negative correlation between family size and children's education, when we include indicators for birth order and/or use twin births as an instrument, family size effects become negligible. In addition, birth order has a significant and large negative effect on children's education. We also study adult earnings, employment, and teenage childbearing, and find strong evidence for birth order effects with these outcomes, particularly among women. These findings suggest the need to revisit economic models of fertility and child "production", focusing not only on differences across families but differences within families as well.

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The More the Merrier? The Effect of Family Size and Birth Order on Children's Education

Será que a desigualdade de rendimentos aumentou durante os últimos tempos? Quem ganhou e quem perdeu neste processo? Este processo afectou todos os países da OCDE uniformemente? Em que medida é que maiores desigualdades de rendimentos são a consequência de maiores diferenças nos rendimentos dos trabalhadores e até que ponto são afectados por outros factores? Finalmente, como é que a redistribuição governamental através do sistema de benefícios fiscais afecta estas tendências?

Book Review: OECD, Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries:

This study aimed to identify the causal effect of breastfeeding on postpartum depression (PPD), using data on mothers from a British survey, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Multivariate linear and logistic regressions were performed to investigate the effects of breastfeeding on mothers’ mental health measured at 8 weeks, 8, 21 and 32 months postpartum. The estimated effect of breastfeeding on PPD differed according to whether women had planned to breastfeed their babies, and by whether they had shown signs of depression during pregnancy. For mothers who were not depressed during pregnancy, the lowest risk of PPD was found among women who had planned to breastfeed, and who had actually breastfed their babies, while the highest risk was found among women who had planned to breastfeed and had not gone on to breastfeed. We conclude that the effect of breastfeeding on maternal depression is extremely heterogeneous, being mediated both by breastfeeding intentions during pregnancy and by mothers’ mental health during pregnancy. Our results underline the importance of providing expert breastfeeding support to women who want to breastfeed; but also, of providing compassionate support for women who had intended to breastfeed, but who find themselves unable to.

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New Evidence on Breastfeeding and Postpartum Depression: The Importance of Understanding Women's Intentions

This article examines the living arrangements of people between ages fifteen and thirty-five in Europe and the United States. Three regional patterns emerge in Europe. In southern Europe, young people remain for extended periods in the parental home and tend to make direct transitions from living at home to (formal) marriage and parenthood. In northern Europe, youngsters leave home earlier and more commonly live alone or in cohabiting unions. The Scandinavian countries form an extreme example of northern behavior, with particularly early home leaving and high levels of nonmarital cohabitation. In the United States, there are large differences between young blacks, whites, and Hispanics. Formal marriage is as common among whites as it is in southern Europe; the extended family is common for blacks and Hispanics, and lone motherhood among young black American women far outstrips the highest rates in Europe.

Regional Differences in the Transition to Adulthood

People's childbearing intentions change over the course of their reproductive lives. these changes have been conceptualized as occurring in response to the realization that an individual is unlikely to achieve his or her intended fertility, because of constraints such as the “biological clock” or lack of a partner. in this article we fnd that changes to child-bearing plans are infuenced by a much wider range of factors than this. People change their plans in response to the wishes of their partners, in response to social norms, as the result of repartnering, and as the result of learning about the costs and benefts of parenthood; there are also differences between the factors that infuence men's and women's decisionmaking. in a departure from existing studies in this area, we use a fexible analytical framework that enables us to analyze increases in planned fertility separately from decreases. this allows us to uncover several complexities of the decisionmaking process that would otherwise be hidden, and leads us to conclude that the determinants of increases in planned fertility are not simply equal and opposite to the determinants of decreases.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/23043263

Yearning, Learning, and Conceding: Reasons Men and Women Change Their Childbearing Intentions

There is an increasing amount of research focussing on the transition to adulthood, a stage of the life cycle where young people face demanding life decisions, including completion of education, finding stable employment, and establishing their household and family. Whereas there is a well-developed literature on poverty among households in general, very little research has focused on poverty among young adults. Using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) we provide a detailed description of youth poverty in Europe. Across the European Union youth poverty varies greatly, being higher in Southern European countries, as well as in the ‘liberal’ regimes of the UK and Ireland. However, there are also large variations in the extent of youth poverty within countries, between what we might term 'younger youth' (aged 16-19) and 'older youth' aged (25-29). In the UK, poverty rates among 'younger youth' are much higher than among 'older youth', suggesting that poverty among young people is closely associated with child poverty. In the Scandinavian countries, poverty peaks dramatically in the early twenties, indicating that in these countries, poverty is associated with leaving home.

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Maria Iacovou

Papers

New Evidence on Breastfeeding and Postpartum Depression: The Importance of Understanding Women's Intentions

Regional Differences in the Transition to Adulthood

Yearning, Learning, and Conceding: Reasons Men and Women Change Their Childbearing Intentions

Youth poverty and transition to adulthood in Europe

Leaving home: Independence, togetherness and income