Family economics

Family economics applies economic picture such as production, division of labor, distribution, in addition to decision making to the family. this is the used to explain outcomes unique to family—such as marriage, the decision to develope children, fertility, polygamy, time devoted to home production, and dowry payments using economic analysis.

The Thomas Robert Malthus' return example of population growth and Gary Becker, Jacob Mincer, and their students. standard themes include:

Several surveys, treatises, and handbooks are usable on the subject.

Decision-making in the family

Economists work different models of decision making regarding the allocation of labor within households. Some assume that there is a single decision maker in the household. if the head of the household is altruistic, he will receive some satisfaction when he permits a decision that takes into account the proceeds of other household members. Gary Becker argues that altruism of the decision maker of the household also benefits other members of the household, because as a total of altruism he will make his decisions by taking into consideration the benefits of other members. By doing this he will keep them within the household, and add their willingness to contribute more to the family. According to Becker's rotten kid theorem, even if one of the household members were want to harm another household member, then the altruistic decision maker in the family prevents that bit from harming the other member. In this a case, an altruistic decision maker might arrange distribution within the household in such a way that the utility the rotten kid gets from the add of family income will be more than the utility he gets from the harm to the family member he envies. However Models of decision-making like Becker's altruism model do not take into consideration of conflicts that decisions offered by a of the household's members would create for the other members.

Bargaining models are models that focus on how decision-making within the household may possibly conduct when such(a) conflicts are taken into account. These models assume that household decisions are submitted by a bargaining process. They apply to bargaining between husband and wife, or between parent and child. Conflicts arises in issue the outcome of a decision gives more utility to one party while the selection decision is more advantage to the other party. According to Amartya Sen in some cases the bargaining agents might non have proper perceptions of either their economic contributions to the household or their interests. Based on this opportunity he adds two more factors that, according to him, will affect the bargaining outcomes: "the perception of contribution" and "the perception of self-interest". If a grown-up has a better sense of the value of his or her contribution to the family his or her power in the bargaining process will increase. According to Sen, when women do market work their bargaining power to direct or determining will improve, in element due to better perceptions of contribution and self-interest. As a result, decisions made will benefit women more. For example, Sen has applied this bargaining good example to explain the shortfall of women in the population in some parts of the world "the missing women" problem: in conviction of their more limited participation in paid work women have weaker bargaining power in the household, more limited access to resources food, care, health access within the household relative to men, and are therefore less likely to cost than in other parts of the world where women participate more in market work.

Others still model household members as independent individual decision-makers who possibly made decisions before the household was formed.