The Family in Modern Economic Life

Dr. Gary S. Becker

The family has changed more rapidly during the past 50 years in richer countries than at any time in recorded history. These changes include a sharp decline in birth rates, a sharply increased labor force participation rate of married women, a large increase in divorce rates, a huge expansion of expenditures on the education of children, and a big increase in the fraction of elderly parents who live separately from their children.

Some of these changes in families have been induced by permanent alterations in the economy that are unlikely to be reversed. Among the most important alterations are the growing education of women and the shift of economies toward the service sector and away from manufacturing, and the importance of education of children that shifted families away from having many children and toward having fewer children with more human capita! invested in them. Also important are the higher earnings and financial independence of women, and the increased financial independence of the elderly.

In addition, however, unwise public policies that can and should be reversed have induced some of the changes in the family. These include welfare laws that encourage family dissolution and births to unmarried women, and changes in divorce laws that penalize women and also encourage divorce. No less significant is the neglect by the national income accounts of the contributions of women who stay home to raise their children, combined with subsidies to married women who work rather than raise their children at home. Also relevant is the pay as you go social security systems that encourage lower birth rates. My paper will discuss these and related issues.

Read The Papers' Abstract:

• The Positive Impact of Marriage and Family Life By Wade F. Horn, Ph.D.

• Blessing or Bane? The Role and Problems of Media in the Modern Family By Larrie E. Gale, Ph.D.

• "What's Happening to the Family?" By Joseph Chamie Director

• Paper Abstract of Georges Haddad Director Division of Higher Education UNESCO

• The Complementarity of Motherhood and Fatherhood: A Tour de Force of the Relevant Social Science By W. Bradford Wilcox

• Paper Abstract of Norval under the topic of Poromotal Marital and Social Stability