计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

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

Economics Of Discrimination

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Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It

This paper reports trends in educational assortative marriage from 1940 to 2003 in the U.S. Analyses of Census and Current Population Survey data show that educational homogamy increased over most of this period, although there is some evidence of stabilization in the 1990s. From 1940 to the early-1970s, these increases were generated by decreasing intermarriage among groups of relatively well educated persons. Beginning in the early-1970s, the odds of intermarriage among the highly educated stabilized while the odds that high school dropouts marry up dropped substantially. These trends are similar for a broad cross-section of married couples and for newlyweds.

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Trends in Educational Assortative Marriage From 1940 to 2003 - eScholarship

Parenthood is often considered a major factor behind gender differences in time allocation, especially between paid work and housework. This article investigates the impact of parenthood on men's and women's daily time use in Sweden and how it changed over the 1990s. The analysis is made using time diary data from the Multinational Time Use Survey (MTUS; N = 13,729) and multivariate Tobit regressions. The results indicate that while parenthood in 1990 - 1991 clearly strengthened the traditional gender division of labor in the household, this was much less the case in 2000 - 2001, when parenthood affected men and women in a more similar way.

Does Parenthood Strengthen a Traditional Household Division of Labor? Evidence from Sweden.

This book deals with women and socioeconomic change in twentieth century Sweden. The main focus is on how women’s education and labor force participation have affected fertility over time. Although many perceive Sweden as a country where men and women have equal opportunities, traditional gender roles continue to constrain male and female activities and opportunities. The gender division of labor within the family, as well as within society as a whole, is central to the conceptual framework for the theoretically oriented analysis that is founded in neoclassical theory. Another theoretical feature is the application of a long-term historical as well as a gender perspective. Empirically, this study analyzes fertility change, labor force participation and transitions in connection with childbirth, educational segregation, and leaving home; using quantitative, macro-level and micro-level, data as well as qualitative sources.

During the twentieth century, women’s advances in education overtook the lead position of men, female labor force participation increased, and the gender wage gap narrowed considerably. These economic changes generated demographic responses, notably timing effects on fertility that made the period fertility rate fluctuate, as the incentive structure for potential mothers changed and the relative cost of children increased. Change was, however, concentrated to distinct periods, namely the 1920s, the post-war 1940s, and the 1960s and 1970s. The 1990s also emerges as an important period of change. The results of this study indicate that women changed their behavior much more than men during these periods as opportunities for women to partake in production increased through economic structural change. Moreover, policy reforms that facilitated the combination of productive and reproductive activities were effectuated. Against the background of structural change in the Swedish economy, women over time chose different strategies, meaning different combinations over the life cycle of education, career and fertility.

This study of the long-term development of education, labor force participation and fertility contributes to our understanding of important facets of the twentieth century and why the road to gender equality has been so slow.

Education, Labor Force Participation and Changing Fertility Patterns. A Study of Women and Socioeconomic Change in Twentieth Century Sweden.

Having young children generally intensifies gendered patterns of time use. During the 1990s, this pattern changed in several Nordic countries, where welfare state arrangements support gender equality and work–family balance more comprehensively than elsewhere. We investigate the impact of parenthood on men’s and women’s time use across welfare state regimes, performing ordinary least squares regressions using data from the Multinational Time Use Study for Germany, Italy, and Canada (N = 57,367 weekdays/53,292 weekends). We find convergence of men’s and women’s time use over the 1990s but uncover no strong evidence of the Nordic pattern emerging elsewhere. Instead, in countries with less comprehensive family policies and less support for gender equality, parenthood continued to reinforce traditional patterns of behavior on weekdays. There is evidence of change on weekends in Germany and Canada, where fathers became more involved domestically, but not in Italy, suggesting certain welfare state regimes may preserve gendered behavior more than others.

It’s about time! Gender, parenthood, and household divisions of labor under different welfare regimes

Having young children generally intensifies gendered patterns of time use. During the 1990s, this pattern changed in several Nordic countries, where welfare state arrangements support gender equality and work–family balance more comprehensively than elsewhere. We investigate the impact of parenthood on men’s and women’s time use across welfare state regimes, performing ordinary least squares regressions using data from the Multinational Time Use Study for Germany, Italy, and Canada (N = 57,367 weekdays/53,292 weekends). We find convergence of men’s and women’s time use over the 1990s but uncover no strong evidence of the Nordic pattern emerging elsewhere. Instead, in countries with less comprehensive family policies and less support for gender equality, parenthood continued to reinforce traditional patterns of behavior on weekdays. There is evidence of change on weekends in Germany and Canada, where fathers became more involved domestically, but not in Italy, suggesting certain welfare state regimes may p...

It’s About Time! Gender, Parenthood, and Household Divisions of Labor Under Different Welfare Regimes

This article studies continued childbearing and union stability among "power couples," or dual-career couples. The determinants of these events are analysed multivariately using longitudinal data on couples from population registers in Sweden, 1991-2005. Power couples are identified using their levels and fields of education, and their sectors of employment. Income and other variables are controlled for. The results show that power couples are more likely to continue childbearing, and are less likely to separate, than other couples. This implies that, despite the expected higher opportunity costs of childbearing and the small gains to specialisation, power couples who start families are able to combine career and continued childbearing. 1. Introduction A "power couple" is a feature of modern life that is defined as two individuals, both having high -powered careers, or being influential otherwise (see Costa and Kahn 2000; Compton and Pollak 2004). Today's power couples are different from those of the past (Abbott 2003), and the growth in the number of these couples is related to the huge increase in women's education and labour force participation since the 1960s, and the increased prevalence of the dual-earner family. In a dual-earner couple, both partners have jobs, but only one of the partners has a career. Power couples differ from dual-earner couples in that both partners pursue careers characterised by high professional standards, continuous progress through a hierarchy, and high degrees of challenge and commitment. Power couples therefore face a number of challenges, of which co-location and geographic mobility, together with family responsibilities, are the most important. These issues affect women's careers more than men's careers. Due to the perceived incompatibility of family and career, researchers throughout the Western world have tended to view "opting out" (Stone 2007), late and low fertility, and increasing levels of childlessness among highly educated and professional women as responses to the high opportunity costs associated with childbearing (e.g., Gerson 1985; Hewlett 2003). There are, however, theoretical reasons to suppose that power couples with high earnings potential might not have lower fertility than other couples, and may indeed be more likely to continue childbearing than those with moderate earnings potential. Empirical tests of this assumption are, however, rare. We wish to help fill this gap by analysing continued childbearing and union stability in power couples in Sweden since 1990. We focus on the childbearing patterns of couples in which both partners are university graduates, and who are therefore more likely than other couples to have high powered careers. In the analysis, we also take into account union dissolution by using a multinomial logit model to simultaneously analyse the impact of the explanatory variables on having a birth and separating. The analyses are made using longitudinal data from population registers in Sweden 1991-2005. 2. Theoretical background and previous research 2.1 Power couples Power couples, or dual-career households (cf. Rapoport and Rapoport 1969, 1971; Costa and Kahn 2000), make up a small share of the population, but are nevertheless becoming increasingly common as more women and men acquire academic degrees and choose to pursue high powered careers. Power couples are often said to have coupled or coordinated careers (Bernasco 1994), because this is what distinguishes them from the more common dual-earner couples. The often-cited difficulties associated with combining career and family lead many professional women and men in dual-career households to limit their family size or remain childless (Altucher and Williams 2003). Whereas some remain childless by choice to avert the negative impact that parenthood might have on their careers (Bram 1985; Tanturri and Mencarini 2008), Hewlett (2002) argues that many successful female professionals in the United States find themselves in this situation through a "creeping non-choice," because each year, for the sake of work, they put off family formation, and then one day discover it is too late to have children. …

https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol23/30/23-30.pdf

Maria Stanfors

Papers

Does Parenthood Strengthen a Traditional Household Division of Labor? Evidence from Sweden.

Education, Labor Force Participation and Changing Fertility Patterns. A Study of Women and Socioeconomic Change in Twentieth Century Sweden.

It’s about time! Gender, parenthood, and household divisions of labor under different welfare regimes

It’s About Time! Gender, Parenthood, and Household Divisions of Labor Under Different Welfare Regimes

Family Life in Power Couples. Continued Childbearing and Union Stability among the Educational Elite in Sweden, 1991–2005