Biological Basics and the Economics of the Family

Abstract

Many economic models of the family are based on a generic "person 1 - person 2" household or "parent - child" family, rather than their anatomically correct counterparts: sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, and grandfathers and grandmothers. These economic models can offer powerful insights into family behavior, but also can leave certain patterns unexplained and neglect potentially important crosscurrents. "Bio-founded" approaches explicitly consider sex differences in reproductive capabilities and constraints, and can illuminate differences in the goals and interests of men versus women regarding preferences for a mate, decisions to marry or to terminate a marriage, how much to invest in a relationship, how much to invest in children, and how much to value the quality relative to the quantity of children Melding biological insights with family economics can cast new light on existing knowledge and open up novel paths for research. This paper generates biologically based hypotheses about family behavior by using Hamilton's rule, which holds that the costs and benefits of altruistic acts are weighted by the closeness of the genetic relationship, and by noting various fundamentals of human reproductive biology (for instance, a father might be uncertain of his genetic relationship to offspring, but a mother almost never is). This strategy generates a unified approach for modeling diverse aspects of family behavior. My discussion of biological fundamentals will include applications, empirical illustrations, and suggestions for how to merge these basics with current economic thinking.

Gender equity and the escape from poverty

“…Households maximize (1) subject to (2) and given non-negativity constraints on all variables. Studies in the evolutionary psychology literature (Trivers, 1972;Cox, 2007) as well as empirical evidence (cf. Thomas, 1990;Pitt and Khandker, 1998;Becker, 1999;Miller, 2008) suggest that the utility weight on child quantity is higher for men than for women, while the converse holds true for the utility weight on child quality.…”

Hidden consequences of a first-born boy for mothers

“…For example, Catalano et al, (2005a,b) shows that the birth ratio increased after the September 11 attack or in times of high unemployment. Moreover, the sex of a born-alive child (also the first-born) is (weakly) correlated with socio-economic characteristics of the mother, making mothers in good condition more likely to have sons (Cox, 2007;Trivers and Willard, 1973). The definition of "good condition" may vary but for example Almond and Edlund (2007) find that better educated, married and younger women bear more sons.…”

The Optimal Bargain between the Elite and the Majority: Party and Managerial Ideologies as Devices to Control Politicians and Managers

“…7 Our conclusion that agents' victory-oriented motivations will not necessarily align them with the principals' preferences all else equal accords with that of Besley (2006), who follows Joseph Schumpeter (1950) in contending that competitive elections are the best available control mechanism for political agents, but further contends that they are an inefficient mechanism that can under some circumstances enhance distortions from moral hazard and fail to prevent adverse selection problems. and philosophical position (Kant 1783;Anderson 1993) that certain values are intrinsically rather than instrumentally valuable, while according with another cultural and philosophical stance, utilitarianism (Bentham 1970), as well as with Frank (1988) and other economic and sociobiological modelers of the utility of values (Becker 1993;Andreoni 1995;Ben-Ner and Putterman 1998;Cox 2007).…”