Editor's introduction

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Oct, 2004

The word "economics" derives from the Greek word "economicus," which means household management. In ancient Greek times the citizens of places like Athens lived on small farms of less than 10 acres in size and harvested barley, wheat, olives, figs, and grapes. Their households consisted of extended families and some slaves as well. In ancient times, household management meant more than going shopping and arranging the cleaning person to come on Tuesday. Economics included husbandry and agricultural arts as well (Baeck 1994, p. 1). Household management in this sense was an immensely complicated matter and it became even more complication with the establishment of large country estates in Roman times and after. (1)

The symposium that graces the first part of this number of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, deals with some modern threads that are part of the fabric of modern family life in urbanized settings. A sizeable segment of the American population have found that private home ownership eludes them, and they have had to make their way in rental units or worse. Unlike during ancient times and even as late as the first part of the 19th century, precious few families in North America actually live on farms. Still in the modern urban household there is a great deal to be managed, and more to be negotiated between marriage partners, as the lead article in this issue makes clear.

Professor Allen M. Parkman discusses the negotiation of housework between men and women as revealed through the data of the National Survey of Families and Households. The setting for his study is the modern American household, which consists of two members of opposite sex, roamed to each other and Living in a dwelling without servants, slaves, animals, or even relatives. It is well known that when one spouse goes out to work in order to gain a "second" family income there are lost opportunities associated with that decision. The extra real income that is earned (and can be measured) is really a misleading index of how family living standards have changed in the two-person working household. That is because the extra time devoted to workplace activity must be deducted from time that would otherwise be spent doing other things. As the saying goes, "there are only 24 hours in a day."

Consider what happens after, say, the woman gets a full-time job and stops working as a full-time homemaker--the production of household goods and services rapidly plummets in quantity and quality. The excitement of the buffet line is substituted for the thin chime of the dinner bell. On Table 3 in his article, Parkman lists several household activities and records the number of hours that each spouse devotes to these activities. It turns out that wives going to work only contribute a much more limited amount to family welfare than at first might be imagined from looking only at the take-home pay. The time a woman devotes to each household task plummets and the man of the household doesn't pick up the slack--at least not by so much (as measured by Parkman's regression routines). Households in which there are both children and working parents reveal a somewhat different statistical pattern. If mom devotes less time to the children, does dad pick up the slack?

That question is addressed in the Michael Leeds and Per von Allmen paper. They analyze the data recorded in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to discover that wives' home production behavior is shaped more by the working status of the wife than by any other single factor considered in that study. But for the husband, things are quite different. He will pitch in more effort for household chores but only if there are children to be managed and nurtured. Such a picture of family life and commitment to the next generation is a pleasing one indeed. But what can be said about families that are missing one parent, typically the biological father who has either left or died?

The Gary Painter and David I. Levine study offers us a somewhat sobering picture of child development in the proverbial "broken home." The likelihood of the maturing child dropping out of high school or worse is about 6 percentage points higher than in households where both biological parents remain together under a single roof. According to Painter and Levine, it is family income that accounts for so much of the socially undesirable measurements about children and their development. Obviously, single-parent households or households with at least one nonbiological parent present (for example, the stepfather), also do not bode well for childhood development and success. But what normative implications follow from these measurements? The authors are reluctant to prescribe social remedies or treatments, preferring instead to merely highlight and measure the phenomenon itself.

Professor Cathleen Whiting demonstrates a normative no-holds-barred approach to debunking the great American dream about every family "owning" its own home. Whiting is a reformer who wants to redistribute income from the rich to the poor by engaging government tax power. Her prose will raise feathers on the bonnet, of many economists who might point out (1) that the redistributions that she proposes will discourage home building and in the end make matters worse or (2) that even if income were redistributed, Whiting might not be pleased with the manner in which her chosen "poor" choose to spend the new fruits of the redistribution. Cynics suspect that many of the recipients of such windfall redistributions would go for broke down at the local gambling casino rather than go to the real estate broker. A more reasonable criticism of Whiting's thesis is that each person makes his or her own tradeoffs with whatever disposable income is available, and there is no guarantee that any redistributions will cause home ownership to increase rather than new car sales or even college education. It is not at all clear that income redistribution by itself will result in a new pattern of home ownership.