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

The role of improved schooling, a central part of most development strategies, has become controversial because expansion of school attainment has not guaranteed improved economic conditions. This paper reviews the role of cognitive skills in promoting economic well-being, with a particular focus on the role of school quality and quantity. It concludes that there is strong evidence that the cognitive skills of the population – rather than mere school attainment – are powerfully related to individual earnings, to the distribution of income, and to economic growth. New empirical results show the importance of both minimal and high level skills, the complementarity of skills and quality of economic institutions, and robustness of the relationship between skills and growth. International comparisons incorporating expanded data on cognitive skills reveal much larger skill deficits in developing countries than generally derived from just school enrollment and attainment. The magnitude of change needed makes clear that closing the economic gap with developed countries will require major structural changes in schooling institutions.

The role of cognitive skills in economic development

The role of improved schooling, a central part of most development strategies, has become controversial because expansion of school attainment has not guaranteed improved economic conditions. This paper reviews the role of cognitive skills in pro- moting economic well-being, with a particular focus on the role of school quality and quantity. It concludes that there is strong evidence that the cognitive skills of the population—rather than mere school attainment—are powerfully related to indi- vidual earnings, to the distribution of income, and to economic growth. New empiri- cal results show the importance of both minimal and high level skills, the comple- mentarity of skills and the quality of economic institutions, and the robustness of the relationship between skills and growth. International comparisons incorporating expanded data on cognitive skills reveal much larger skill deficits in developing coun - tries than generally derived from just school enrollment and attainment. The mag- nitude of change needed makes clear that closing the economic gap with developed countries will require major structural changes in schooling institutions.

/pdf/the-role-of-cognitive-skills-in-economic-development-4mrvfvvdzy.pdf

The Role of Cognitive Skills in Economic Development

The Statistics of Canada

When politicians point to the high social costs and taxpayer burden imposed by disintegrating `family values they overlook the fact that individuals do not simply make the decisions that lead to unwed parenthood marriage or divorce on the basis of what is good for society. They weigh the costs and benefits of each of these choices to themselves--and sometimes their children. But how much do individuals know about these costs and benefits? I think that we as demographers have something to contribute here. As individual researchers we investigate the relationship between marriage and longevity wealth earnings or childrens achievements but we rarely try to pull all this evidence together. I would like to argue that we have an opportunity and an obligation to do that and to tell people what their decisions about marriage and family potentially mean for them as individuals. That is my objective here. (EXCERPT)

Does Marriage Matter

Earning differences by major field of study: evidence from three cohorts of recent Canadian graduates

. Poverty (low income) dynamics are explored using tax filer data covering the period 1992 to 1996. The distributions of short- and long-term episodes are identified and reveal substantial differences by sex and family type. Entry and exit models explore the relationships between poverty transitions and sex, family status and other personal and situational attributes. Duration effects on exiting and re-entering poverty are found to be important, and models including past poverty experiences point to strong ‘occurrence dependence’ for poverty entry and incidence. Fixed-effect panel data models confirm the above and reveal asymmetries in the impacts of household transitions on poverty. JEL Classification: I3



La dynamique de la pauvrete : resultats empiriques pour le Canada.  Les auteurs examinent la dynamique de la pauvrete(bas revenus)a l’aide des donnees disponibles pour les citoyens qui ont soumis leurs rapports d’impot entre 1992 et 1996. On identifie les distributions d’episodes (courts et longs) de pauvrete, et celles-ci revelent des differences significatives selon le sexe et les attributs familiaux. Les modeles d’entree et sortie identifient les relations entre le statut de pauvrete, le sexe, le statut familial, et d’autres attributs personnels et situationnels. Il appert que les effets de duree sur les periodes de sortie et de re-entree dans un statut de pauvrete sont importants; les modeles qui prennent en compte les episodes de pauvrete anterieurs montrent qu’il y a une forte correlation (occurrence dependence) tant pour le passage au statut de pauvrete que pour l’incidence de tels episodes. Les resultats des etudes transversales confirment ces resultats et revelent des asymetries dans les impacts des transitions dans les menages sur la pauvrete.

Poverty dynamics: empirical evidence for Canada

This paper addresses the topic of inter-provincial migration in terms of the basic question: ‘Who moves?’. Panel logit models of the probability that an individual changes his or her province of residence from one year to the next over the 1982–1995 period are estimated using tax-based longitudinal data. It is found that moving is (i) inversely related to the home province's population size, presumably reflecting local economic conditions and labour market scale effects, while language also plays an important role; (ii) more common among residents of smaller cities, towns, and especially rural areas than those in larger cities; (iii) negatively related to age, marriage, and the presence of children for both men and women; (iv) positively related to the provincial unemployment rate, the individuals’ receipt of unemployment insurance (except Entry Men), having no market income (except for Entry Men and Entry Women), and the receipt of social assistance (especially for men); (v) (slightly) positively related...

Who moves? A logit model analysis of inter-provincial migration in Canada

This research finds that family background (parental education level, family type, ethnicity, location) has important direct and indirect effects on post-secondary participation. The indirect effects of background operate through a set of intermediate variables representing high school outcomes and related attitudes and behaviours. Overall, the large fraction of the family background effect that operates through indirect channels indicates that the period of life before post-secondary financing and related issues become important is crucial for equitable and efficient post-secondary access. These results are based on two sex-specific measures of access (Any Post-secondary, and University) obtained from Statistics Canada's School Leavers and Follow-Up Surveys.

Who Goes? The Direct and Indirect Effects of Family Background on Access to Post-secondary Education

Cet article presente les resultats d'une analyse empirique des consequences economiques du divorce utilisant la banque de donnees Longitudinal Administrative Database (lad). Cette banque de donnees a ete construite a partir des declarations de revenus pour fin d'impǒt de canadiens ayant vecu un divorce. Tant la periode precedent le divorce que la periode měme du divorce et celle le suivant sont couvertes par la banque. Cette etude du divorce est la premiere au Canada a utiliser des donnees longitudinales; la qualite de l'echantillon tire de la banque lad est en fait inegalee ailleurs, tant pour le nombre d'observations que pour sa representativite. Pendant l'annee suivant le divorce, le revenu familial de la femme diminue d'environ la moite alors que celui de l'homme diminue d'environ le quart. L'utilisation de ratios «revenus/besoins» afin de prendre en compte la taille de la famille indique que le bien-ětre des hommes augmente legerement alors que les femmes subissent une baisse de bien-ětre d'un peu plus de 40 pour cent. Ces changements de revenus initiaux sont suivis par des augmentations moderees des revenus des hommes et des femmes dans les annees suivantes. Le taux de pauvrete des femmes passe de .16 a .43 dans l'annee du divorce pour ensuite decliner lentement; pour les hommes, ce taux n'augmente que legerement suite a la separation. Le taux d'activite des femmes ne change pas dans la periode precedent le divorce mais il augmente moderement apres la separation. Le taux d'activite des hommes est, quant a lui, stable. Ces resultats ne prennent en compte ni les revenus de l'aide sociale, ni la diminution de revenus que subissent ceux qui paient une pension. Il est cependant demontre que les resultats demeureraient sensiblement les měmes si ces revenus et pensions etaient inclus. Nous discutons de l'apport de ces resultats a notre comprehension du divorce, du mariage et du modele neo-classique de la famille.



This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of the economic consequences of divorce which uses the recently developed Longitudinal Administrative Database (lad) constructed from Canadian tax files to track individuals leading up to, at the point of, and following marital breakup. This is the first study to use Canadian longitudinal data to address the question, while the lad-derived sample is unequalled anywhere in terms of its size and representative nature. It is found that women's family income drops roughly one-half, and men's declines about one quarter in the first year of divorce, while using income-to-needs ratios to adjust for family size indicates a smallish rise in economic well-being for men, versus drops of just over 40 per cent for women. These initial income changes are followed by moderate rises for both men and women in the following years. Poverty rates jump from .16 to .43 for women in the year of divorce, and then drop off slowly, while for men they rise only a couple of points at the breakup. Women's labour market activity does not change in the pre-divorce period, but increases moderately at the split, while for men it is stable throughout. These figures do not include social assistance income, nor are child support payments deducted from the payer's side, but figures are presented to show that the principal results would not change qualitatively with their inclusion. Several implications of the results for the understanding of divorce, marriage, and the standard neoclassical economics model of the family are discussed.

Ross Finnie

Papers

Earning differences by major field of study: evidence from three cohorts of recent Canadian graduates

Poverty dynamics: empirical evidence for Canada

Who moves? A logit model analysis of inter-provincial migration in Canada

Who Goes? The Direct and Indirect Effects of Family Background on Access to Post-secondary Education

Women, men, and the economic consequences of divorce: Evidence from Canadian longitudinal data