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

Applying an employment-income-based procedure for determining retirement, we analysed a large longitudinal data file of Canadian personal income tax returns for individuals to determine who has retired and to assess how successful they are in maintaining their incomes after retirement. The methodological approach may be of interest for possible application in other countries that have suitable data. Our main conclusions are as follows. First, in the two years immediately after retirement, the after-tax income replacement ratios average about two thirds when calculated across all ages of retirement. Second, the ratios tend to increase with the age of retirement. Third, the ratios increase with years in retirement, at least in the first few years. Finally, income replacement ratios are highest in the lowest income quartile and generally decline as income increases; within each quartile, the replacement ratios are higher for those who retired later than for those who retired earlier.

/pdf/income-replacement-in-retirement-longitudinal-evidence-from-52jflpkwl9.pdf

Income replacement in retirement: longitudinal evidence from income tax records.

A partir des cohortes de l’Enquete nationale aupres des diplomes, nous analysons les revenus des Canadiens detenteurs d’un baccalaureat cinq ans apres l’obtention de leur diplome. Nos resultats montrent qu’il y a un lien important entre les revenus et l’universite qui decerne le diplome, puisque nous observons des correlations entre les revenus et les caracteristiques des universites frequentees. Par exemple, le nombre plus eleve d’etudiants de premier cycle, qui entraine possiblement un enseignement de qualite moins elevee, est lie a des revenus inferieurs. Chez les hommes, mais pas chez les femmes, un ratio professeurs-etudiants plus eleve est lie a des revenus significativement plus eleves. Quand on ne tient pas compte de la majeure des etudiants, qui peut etre liee de facon endogene a l’universite frequentee, l’effet des caracteristiques des universites est encore plus marque. Notons toutefois que les caracteristiques des universites ne sont pas fortement liees a la probabilite d’obtenir un emploi apres l’obtention d’un diplome.
	 Abstract: Using three cohorts of the National Graduates Survey, we study earnings five years after graduation from Canadian bachelor’s programs. Evidence is found of significant university-specific effects on earnings. Changes in earnings and university characteristics across cohort are correlated. Increased undergraduate enrolment is associated with lower earnings, suggesting crowding out in educational quality. For men, but not women, increases in the professor-student ratio are associated with meaningful gains in earnings. When student major is excluded, since it may be endogenous to university, the effect of university characteristics is much larger. University characteristics are not strongly related to post-graduation employment probabilities.

https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CPP.39.Supplement1.S81

The Role of University Characteristics in Determining Post-Graduation Outcomes: Panel Evidence from Three Canadian Cohorts

This paper reports the results of an empirical analysis of the early career outcomes of recent Canadian Bachelor's level graduates by discipline based on three waves of the National Graduates Surveys, which comprise large, representative databases of individuals who successfully completed their programmes at Canadian universities in 1982, 1986, and 1990, with information gathered during interviews conducted two and five years after graduation for each group of graduates (1984/87, 1988/92, 1990/95). The outcomes analysed, all broken down by sex and discipline, include: the distribution of graduates by field and the percentage of female graduates; the percentage of graduates who subsequently completed another educational programme; the overall evaluation of the choice of major (would they choose it again?); unemployment rates, the percentage of workers in part-time jobs, in temporary jobs, self-employed; the job-education skill and credentials matches; earnings levels and rates of growth; and job satisfaction (earnings, overall). Many of the outcomes conform to expectations, typically reflecting the different orientations of the various disciplines with respect to direct career preparedness, with the professions and other applied disciplines generally characterised by lower unemployment rates, closer skill and qualification matches, higher earnings, and so on. On the other hand, while the "applied" fields also tend to perform well in terms of the "softer", more subjective measures regarding job satisfaction and the overall evaluation of the chosen programme (would the graduate choose the same major again?), the findings also indicate that graduates' assessments of their post-graduation experiences and overall evaluations of the programmes from which they graduated are based on more than simply adding up standard measures of labour market "success", with the job satisfaction scores and - perhaps most interestingly - the overall programme evaluations often departing from what the objective measures (unemployment rates, earnings levels, etc.) might have predicted. Some implications of the findings are discussed and avenues for future research are suggested.

Ross Finnie

Papers

Income replacement in retirement: longitudinal evidence from income tax records.

The Role of University Characteristics in Determining Post-Graduation Outcomes: Panel Evidence from Three Canadian Cohorts

Early Labour Market Outcomes of Recent Canadian University Graduates by Discipline: A Longitudinal, Cross-cohort Analysis

Family matters: New policies for divorce, lone mothers and child poverty

Job Experience and Men's and Women's Wages: Panel Estimates form the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth