Family Economics
Instructor: Nezih Guner
Consider how different households in the U.S. and other industrialized countries look today relative to decades ago. First, a smaller proportion of the adult population is married today than it was in the past. Second, fertility rates declined everywhere, reaching what demographers call lowest-low fertility in some countries. Third, the amount of time allocated to market work by married households has increased markedly over the post-war period. This was critically driven by a rise in labor-force participation by married females. As a result, today’s households are very far from traditional breadwinner husband and housekeeper wife paradigm. We live in a different world.
Not surprisingly, these dramatic changes created a large body of literature on causes and consequences of these changes, as well as the challenges that they pose for public policy. Of course, economics of family has been an active research area for a long time, starting with seminal contributions of Gary Becker. Three developments, however, shaped family economics in recent decades: First, there is a much better understanding of, both theoretically and empirically, how families make decisions and allocate resources. Second, there is a growing body of literature demonstrating the importance of early childhood conditions and family background for future labor market outcomes. Finally, a growing number of papers use the tools of modern macroeconomics (e.g. search and matching models and heterogeneous agents models) to study family.
Given this background, the objective of this course is to study the factors behind the changing family patterns in the U.S. and other industrialized countries. The course will start with a review of economic theories of fertility, female labor force participation, and marriage. We will pay particular attention to how one can study family within an equilibrium framework with heterogeneous agents. We will also try to pay particular attention to how public policies (ranging from divorce laws to child care subsidies) affect families. Then, we will put the theory into practice, analyzing what the existing models can say about changing family patterns.
Course Outline
- Basic facts: Changing family patterns in industrialized countries (past, present and future).
- Fertility: Why do more educated female have fewer children and have them later?
- Female Labor Supply: Why did married female labor force participation increased so much in recent decades?
- Marriage and Divorce: Who marries and who remains single? Who marries with whom?
- Public Policy: How do government policies affect parents and their children?
Nezih Guner is ICREA Research Professor at MOVE (Markets, Organizations and Votes in Economics), Adjunct Professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Research Professor of the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.
Before joining the Barcelona economics community, he held academic positions at Queen’s University (Canada), Pennsylvania State University, and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Prof. Guner is Affiliate of the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), Research Fellow of the Institute for Study of Labor (IZA), and a member of the Family Inequality Working Group in the Becker Friedman Institute for Economic Research at the University of Chicago. He is a co-editor of Economic Inquiry and Associate Editor of Journal of Population Economics and SERIEs (Journal of Spanish Economic Association). He is also a member of the Council of Spanish Economic Association. In 2010, Prof. Guner was awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant for his project, "Changing Families: Causes, Consequences, and Challenges." His work has been published in leading economic journals, such as Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Review of Economic Studies.
An important part of Prof. Guner's research focuses on the causes of changes in family structure in industrialized countries during the 20th century, and their consequences for children and income inequality. He is also studying how changes in family structure can alter the way public policy, such as taxation and social insurance programs, affect the aggregate economy. In addition to his work on family economics, he has examined how misallocation of resources across firms affects the size distribution of firms and aggregate productivity; the interaction between labor market frictions and firm dynamics; and how this interaction can affect the outcomes of trade reforms.
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