https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

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

Social Network Analysis

25. Multiple Imputation for Nonresponse in Surveys. By D. B. Rubin. ISBN 0 471 08705 X. Wiley, Chichester, 1987. 258 pp. £30.25.

Multiple Imputation for Nonresponse in Surveys

We investigate conditions sufficient for identification of average treatment effects using instrumental variables. First we show that the existence of valid instruments is not sufficient to identify any meaningful average treatment effect. We then establish that the combination of an instrument and a condition on the relation between the instrument and the participation status is sufficient for identification of a local average treatment effect for those who can be induced to change their participation status by changing the value of the instrument. Finally we derive the probability limit of the standard IV estimator under these conditions. It is seen to be a weighted average of local average treatment effects.

Evolution and Rationality Some Recent Game-Theoretic Results. Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects

Combining statistical and ethnographic analyses, this article explores the prevalence and ramifications of eviction in the lives of the urban poor. A quantitative analysis of administrative and survey data finds that eviction is commonplace in inner-city black neighborhoods and that women from those neighborhoods are evicted at significantly higher rates than men. A qualitative analysis of ethnographic data based on fieldwork among evicted tenants and their landlords reveals multiple mechanisms propelling this discrepancy. In poor black neighborhoods, eviction is to women what incarceration is to men: a typical but severely consequential occurrence contributing to the reproduction of urban poverty.

/pdf/eviction-and-the-reproduction-of-urban-poverty-1rz6yiww80.pdf

Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty

“The hood is good”1. Così definisce il mercato privato degli affitti di bassa soglia Sherreena, insegnante in pensione e oggi “inner-city entrepeneur” (p. 13), ovvero proprietaria di case nel Black North Side di Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Usa). Queste quattro parole (p. 152) riassumono al meglio gli esiti della ricerca etnografica condotta dal sociologo Desmond sul crescente fenomeno degli sfratti a Milwaukee, Stati Uniti. Matthew Desmond è professore associato al Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali di Harvard e co-direttore del progetto “Justice and Poverty”2. Il suo ultimo lavoro, “Evicted. Poverty and Profit in the American City”, è diventato un caso editoriale negli Stati Uniti. La notevole quantità di articoli, interviste e recensioni che si possono trovare su internet, raccolte anche dall’autore stesso nella pagina web di promozione del libro3, è una prova evidente del successo del testo. Desmond in quest’opera combina elegantemente una prospettiva analitica di carattere accademico con uno stile narrativo proprio del reportage, restituendo un testo scientificamente fondato, ben articolato e allo stesso tempo accattivante. “Evicted” è costruito a partire da una ricerca etnografica condotta tra il maggio 2008 e il dicembre 2009 principalmente in due aree della città di Milwaukee (pp. 317-320): un quartiere periferico abitato in prevalenza da afroamericani in condizioni di severa povertà, il Black North Side, e un parcheggio per roulotte situato nella zona sud della città, denominata South Side. Desmond concentra la sua analisi su otto famiglie affittuarie e sui due proprietari (slumlords) degli alloggi e del parcheggio. La struttura generale del testo è semplice, ma efficace. Il libro è diviso in tre parti composte da otto capitoli ciascuno: la prima parte affronta il tema dell’affitto e del periodo precedente allo sfratto (Rent); la parte centrale del testo descrive il momento stesso dello sfratto e della perdita della casa (Out); la terza parte

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Sociologists long have observed that the urban poor rely on kinship networks to survive economic destitution. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among evicted tenants in high-poverty neighborhoods, this article presents a new explanation for urban survival, one that emphasizes the importance of disposable ties formed between strangers. To meet their most pressing needs, evicted families often relied more on new acquaintances than on kin. Disposable ties facilitated the flow of various resources, but often bonds were brittle and fleeting. The strategy of forming, using, and burning disposable ties allowed families caught in desperate situations to make it from one day to the next, but it also bred instability and fostered misgivings among peers.

/pdf/disposable-ties-and-the-urban-poor1-596vx1aznt.pdf

Disposable Ties and the Urban Poor1

High-profile cases of police violence—disproportionately experienced by black men—may present a serious threat to public safety if they lower citizen crime reporting. Using an interrupted time series design, this study analyzes how one of Milwaukee’s most publicized cases of police violence against an unarmed black man, the beating of Frank Jude, affected police-related 911 calls. Controlling for crime, prior call patterns, and several neighborhood characteristics, we find that residents of Milwaukee’s neighborhoods, especially residents of black neighborhoods, were far less likely to report crime after Jude’s beating was broadcast. The effect lasted for over a year and resulted in a total net loss of approximately 22,200 calls for service. Other local and national cases of police violence against unarmed black men also had a significant impact on citizen crime reporting in Milwaukee. Police misconduct can powerfully suppress one of the most basic forms of civic engagement: calling 911 for matters of pers...

/pdf/police-violence-and-citizen-crime-reporting-in-the-black-t63nbrps1a.pdf

Police Violence and Citizen Crime Reporting in the Black Community

Millions of families across the United States are evicted each year. Yet, we know next to nothing about the impact eviction has on their lives. Focusing on low-income urban mothers, a population at high risk of eviction, this study is among the first to examine rigorously the consequences of involuntary displacement from housing. Applying two methods of propensity score analyses to data from a national survey, we find that eviction has negative effects on mothers in multiple domains. Compared to matched mothers who were not evicted, mothers who were evicted in the previous year experienced more material hardship, were more likely to suffer from depression, reported worse health for themselves and their children, and reported more parenting stress. Some evidence suggests that at least two years after their eviction, mothers still experienced significantly higher rates of material hardship and depression than peers. Language: en

/pdf/eviction-s-fallout-housing-hardship-and-health-1ayuwblrhx.pdf

Matthew Desmond

Papers

Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Disposable Ties and the Urban Poor1

Police Violence and Citizen Crime Reporting in the Black Community

Eviction's Fallout: Housing, Hardship, and Health