Family economics
Family economics studies how families make decisions about marriage, fertility, household production, consumption, and resource allocation.
Household production: The creation of goods and services within a household using time, skills, and purchased inputs. It captures how unpaid work turns household time and market goods into meals, care, and other services.
Marriage market: The process through which people search for and form marital partnerships. Matching models help explain who marries whom and how partner characteristics affect family outcomes.
Gender wage gap: The difference in average earnings between women and men. Unequal care responsibilities and work histories can contribute to persistent earnings differences.
Gary Becker: An American economist who applied economic analysis to discrimination, human capital, crime, and family behavior. His work developed influential models of marriage, fertility, and household production.
Feminist economics: An approach to economics that examines how gender, power, and unpaid work shape economic life. It challenges models that treat household cooperation as efficient without examining gendered power.
Collective household model: A model in which household members have distinct preferences and reach efficient outcomes through bargaining or shared decisions. It replaces the assumption that one household decision-maker represents everyone.
Fertility economics: The study of how economic incentives and constraints influence decisions about having children. It applies household choice models to the timing and number of children.
Child development: The physical, cognitive, emotional, and social changes that occur as children grow. Household income, parental time, and family structure influence children's environments and opportunities.
New Home Economics: An approach that applies economic models to household production, marriage, fertility, and related family decisions. It established household production as a central subject of economic analysis.
Social exchange theory: A social theory that explains relationships through exchanges of rewards, costs, and resources. It also analyzes partnership choices but uses a broader social framework than economic modeling.