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Popular discussions of changes in American families over the past 60 years have revolved around the 'retreat from marriage.' Concern has focused on increasing levels of nonmarital childbearing, as well as falling marriage rates that stem from both increases in the age at first marriage and greater marital instability. Often lost in these discussions is the fact that the decline of marriage has coincided with a rise in cohabitation. Many 'single' Americans now live with a domestic partner and a substantial fraction of 'single' mothers are cohabiting, often with the child's father. The share of women who have ever cohabited has nearly doubled over the past 25 years, and the majority of nonmarital births now occur to cohabiting rather than to unpartnered mothers at all levels of education. The emergence of cohabitation as an alternative to marriage has been a key feature of the post-World War II transformation of the American family. These changes in the patterns and trajectories of family structure have a strong socioeconomic gradient. The important divide is between college graduates and others: individuals who have attended college but do not have a four-year degree have family patterns and trajectories that are very similar to those of high school graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. To examine the effect of changes in parent-child coresidence on caregiving decisions of non-resident siblings over a 5-year period while controlling for characteristics of the elderly parent and adult children in the family network. Method. We use difference-in-difference models applied to Health and Retirement Study-Assets and Health Dynamics of the Elderly data to test the hypothesis that the formation of a joint household between a parent and one of her children raises the bargaining power of non-resident siblings, who then reduce their care to the parent. Similarly, the dissolution of a parent-child household is expected to increase the bargaining power of the child who no longer coresides with the parent relative to her siblings. Results. We find that children whose parent and sibling begin coresiding during the study period are less likely to provide care and provide fewer hours of care than children whose parents never coresided with a child. Adult children whose parent cease coresiding with a sibling, on the other hand, have a higher likelihood of providing care and provide significantly more hours of care relative to children whose parents either coresided with a sibling in both time periods or never coresided with a child. Discussion. Meeting the needs of the growing elderly population while maintaining them in the community is a particular focus of long-term care policy. To the extent that shared living is an important component of such care, the observed sensitivity of nonresident children's caregiving efforts has implications for the well-being of both disabled parents and their coresiding adult children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examined the effects of marital status and family structure on disability, institutionalization, and longevity for a nationally representative sample of elderly persons using Gompertz duration models applied to longitudinal data from 3 cohorts of the Health and Retirement Study (N = 11,481). They found that parents with only stepchildren have worse outcomes than parents with only biological children. Elderly mothers with only stepchildren become disabled and institutionalized sooner, and elderly men with only stepchildren have shorter longevity relative to their counterparts with only biological children. The effect of membership in a blended family differs by gender. Relative to those with only biological children, women in blended families have greater longevity and become disabled later, whereas men in blended families have reduced longevity. The findings indicate that changing marital patterns and increased complexity in family life have adverse effects on late-life health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does joint taxation disadvantage women? To answer that question, this article begins by reviewing bargaining models of intrafamily allocation and discussing the determinants of ‘bargaining power’. It argues that wage rates rather than earnings are determinants of bargaining power, and that productivity in household production is also a determinant of bargaining power. In the absence of human capital effects, joint taxation does not appear to disadvantage women in bargaining. Hence, the claim that joint taxation disadvantages women, if correct, depends on effects that operate through incentives to accumulate human capital. But a satisfactory analysis of the effects of taxation on human capital awaits the further development of dynamic models of family bargaining. (JEL codes: H21, H24, D13, J22) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we test Costa and Kahn's colocation hypothesis, which predicts that power couples--couples in which both spouses have college degrees-are more likely to migrate to the largest cities than part-power couples or power singles. We find no support for this hypothesis. Instead, regression analyses suggest that only the education of the husband and not the joint education profile of the couple affects the propensity to migrate to large metropolitan areas. The observed location trends are better explained by higher rates of power couple formation in larger metropolitan areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gary Becker's path-breaking Treatise on the Family (1981) subjected individuals' decisions about sex, marriage, childbearing, and childrearing to rational choice analysis. The American family has changed radically in recent decades; we survey these changes as well as the ongoing effort to understand partnering, parenting, and care of the elderly as results of maximizing choices made by individuals. First, we describe the recent changes in the American family: the separation of sex, marriage, and childbearing; fewer children and smaller households; converging work and education patterns for men and women; class divergence in partnering and parenting strategies; and the replacement of family functions and home production by government programs and market transactions. Second, we examine recent work in family economics that attempts to explain these changes. Third, we point out some challenging areas for further analysis and highlight issues of commitment in two primary family relationships: those between men and women, and those between parents and children. Finally, we consider the effectiveness of policies to target benefits to certain family members (for instance, children) or to promote marriage and fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article adds to the growing literature describing correlations between children's educational outcomes and family structure. Popular discussions have focused on the distinction between two-parent families and single-parent families. This article shows that educational outcomes for both types of children in blended families--stepchildren and their half-siblings who are the joint children of both parents--are similar to each other and substantially worse than outcomes for children reared in traditional nuclear families. We conclude that as a description of the data, the crucial distinction is between children reared in traditional nuclear families (i.e., families in which all children are the joint children of both parents) and children reared in other family structures (e.g., single-parent families or blended families). We then turn from "stylized facts" (i.e., simple correlations) that control only for family structure to "descriptive regressions" that control for other variables such as family income. When controls for other variables are introduced, the relationship between family structure and children's educational outcomes weakens substantially and is often statistically insignificant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes and analyzes an intergenerational model of domestic violence (IMDV) in which behavioral strategies or scripts are transmitted from parents to children. The model rests upon three key assumptions: The probability that a husband will be violent depends on whether he grew up in a violent home. The probability that a wife will remain with a violent husband depends on whether she grew up in a violent home. Individuals who grew up in violent homes tend to marry individuals who grew up in violent homes. The IMDV calls attention to three features neglected in the domestic violence literature. The first is the marriage market. If some men are more likely than others to be violent as husbands and if some women are more likely than others to remain in violent marriages, then the level of violence is sensitive to the probability that such individuals will marry each other. The second neglected feature is divorce: ongoing domestic violence requires the conjunction of a husband who is violent and a wife who stays in the marriage. Third, variables and policies that reduce the rate of domestic violence in the current generation are likely to reduce it even further in future generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the significance of time-use data in analyzing structural relationships, such as household technology, and behavioral relationships, such as the determinants of the allocation of time among activities. Economic advantages of joint production; Distinction between household preferences and individual preferences; Applications of time-use data in one-person and two-person households.

The transaction cost approach provides a new perspective on families and house-holds. Unlike the new home economies, which focuses exclusively on household production, it recognizes the importance of household organization and family structure. The transaction cost approach views marriage as a "governance structure,'' emphasizes the role of "bargaining" within families, and draws attention to the advantages and disadvantages of family organization in terms of incentives and monitoring, and to the special roles of "altruism" and "family loyalty." It also recognizes the disadvantages of family governance: conflict spillover, the toleration of inefficient personnel, inappropriate ability match, and inability to realize economies of scale. If activities are assigned to institutions in an efficient or cost-minimizing fashion, the balance of these advantages and disadvantages plays a major role in determining which activities are carried out within families and which are performed by firms, nonprofit institutions, or the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract--Pooling consumption data from different countries for demand system estimation is attractive because it increases both sample size and the range of variation of relative prices and income. The major objection to pooling is that different countries may have different demand system parameters. This paper proposes and estimates specifications that permit pooling while allowing both short-run and long-run demand systems to differ across countries. Using data from Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United States, we find that, although pooling was accepted for some pairs of countries and some specifications, it was rejected for most. We conclude that caution is appropriate in pooling international consumption data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose and estimate a new single-product cost function, the CES-translog. Like the translog, it is a flexible functional form, but it is compatible with a wider range of substitution possibilities than either the CES or the translog. As its name suggests, the CES-translog includes both the CES and the translog as special cases and thus permits nested testing using conventional statistical techniques. We estimate the new form and its special cases under a standard modeling scenario using eight data sets and find it significantly superior to the translog in all but one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates dynamic and stochastic structure in consumer demand systems. Separate demand systems for three separate time series of grouped household budget data is estimated. The usual static specification in which all demand system parameters remain fixed, and two dynamic specifications in which some demand system parameters vary with time or lagged consumption has been estimated. Strong evidence that the dynamic specifications are superior to the static model for all three samples is found. The stochastic specification uses an error components structure that allows correlated disturbances across households in a given year. Unlike the usual stochastic specification, it is consistent with the possibility that, for example, in a particularly cold year most households consume more fuel than usual. The paper is organized as follows: Section I describes the demand model. Section II describes the data and discusses the estimation problems arising because as the used data are not for individual households but are grouped by income class. Section III presents results. Section IV summarizes discusses the possibility of interpreting the superiority of dynamic over static models as evidence of changing tastes.

The ability of classical stable population theory to determine the equilibrium growth rate and age structure of a population from its vital rates in a single period depends on assuming that the observed maternity rates are equilibrium rates. This paper resolves the two-sex problem by replacing the fixed, age-specific fertility schedule of classical stable population theory by two basic relationships: a "birth matrix" and a "mating rule." Placing certain restrictions on the birth matrix and the mating rule (BMMR), I establish that under certain plausible conditions, the BMMR model solves the two-sex problem by allowing matings and births to adjust to changes in population structure. The BMMR model thus provides an equilibrating mechanism in place of a fixed maternity schedule of classical stable population theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]