An Economic Approach to the Study of Child Well-Being
- 1 September 1995
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Journal of Family Issues
- Vol. 16 (5), 587-608
- https://doi.org/10.1177/019251395016005005
Abstract
This article describes the economic approach to analyzing family behavior pioneered by Becker, focusing on two areas: household production and altruism. The household production model addresses the important question of how costs, technological changes, and social changes affect the ways in which families rear children and, in turn, reflect the importance of children in our society. Becker's work on altruism explores the nature of parent-parent and parent-child relationships and how these relationships affect resource allocation within the family. Modeling altruism also provides insights into how parent's behavior toward their children is affected by government policies.Keywords
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