Two articles caught my attention recently. The first was “Japan population shrinks by record in 2010”. The title should be self-explanatory. Already the most aged nation on earth, Japan’s demographic winter in 2010 was the most severe on record.
The result of more and more of their young people “waiting to get married and choosing to have fewer children because of careers and lifestyle issues” is that the proportion of the population over the age of 65 is increasing ever rapidly. (25% now, 40% by 2050) Consider the strain on the economic and social resources of any nation when 4 out of 10 citizens are past retirement age. Read more…
Security in the workplace is taking the place of security in marriage. I have been saying this for some time. But now, the major league self-styled feminist groups are coming right out and saying it. Women and children don’t need stability in marriage if they can have stability in employment.
CNSNews.com asked both activists if the federal government should do all it can to promote marriage between a man and a woman to ensure economic security for women. The “activists” in this quote are Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women and Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy.
CNSNews.com asked both activists if the federal government should do all it can to promote marriage between a man and a woman to ensure economic security for women.
“Personally, no, I do not believe that and I don’t think you’ll find any of the women’s groups who are members of the National Council of Women’s Organizations advocating that position,” Read more…
Socialism doesn’t work.
The reason socialism doesn’t work is that it’s based on money for nothing. And the first lesson you learn in economics is that there are no free lunches. That means there is no such thing as money for nothing.
So, Canada, in an effort to free up its economy and to restore prosperity, has banned money for nothing.
Congratulations, Canada.
Wait? What’s that you tell me? It’s nothing to do with prosperity and everything to do with ridiculous PC attempts to ban free speech?
Okay, then. Never mind.
November 19th, 2010
Betsy
by Dainius Kreivys
Governments cannot afford to keep treating family values as an optional extra, says a government minister.
By disfiguring and devaluing family values, governments around the world are crippling their economies and reducing precious budget revenues, argues Lithuanian Economy Minister Dainius Kreivys. His comments, published in a blog post this week, seem to underline the economic logic of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights when it states that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.” Read more…
by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
a review of the book, Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element by John D. Mueller. This review was originally published at Family in America.
John Mueller’s Redeeming Economics is an impressive achievement, really three books in one. Mueller rewrites the history of economics in the first book. In the second book, Mueller expands the concerns of economics in the light of his historical reinterpretation. The third book proposes and critiques public policies through the lens of the theory developed in book two. Readers of The Family in America will probably be most interested in book three. But Mueller’s most lasting contribution to the well-being of the American family may well be book two. His expansion of the concerns of economics has the potential to give economists as well as social conservatives the analytical tools needed to defend the family on its own terms, rather than as a special case of a contract. Read more…
This is really an excellent blog post from the First Things blog. David Lapp dissects one economists’ approach to the decline of marriage among the poor.
While there surely is an economic dimension to marriage, marriage historically has primarily been about bringing children and parents together. So we invented the vacuum cleaner (a standard economic-determinist explanation for why the “household labor” of women is now less valuable than it used to be JRM)—did children then stop needing a mother and father? Sure, women have access to the Pill and work in the marketplace—does that mean the children men and women keep creating suddenly lost the need for married parents? Even if we no longer need our children to be hired hands, women are still bearing children.
He concludes, in effect, that marriage is a social justice issue, but not in the way that advocates of redefining marriage think.
Marriage for the lower classes would provide them and their children, with great social benefits, not readily available in other ways.
consider the norm of bearing children only within marriage. Society says, “Trust us: even though every instinct in your body right now is telling you how wonderful it would be to be a mother and that your boyfriend will be a loving, committed father—trust us when we say that marriage is the institution designed to bind parents to their children.” The norm is meant to protect people—especially women and children—from the fickleness of human nature and to ensure that children have a mother and father. The norm of chastity (now a taboo) does the same. …the acceptance of children outside of marriage comes with a caveat: in this case, the most resourced assure everyone else that all family forms are valid, children are resilient, and can thrive just as well in single-parent families as in married families—and then turn around and admonish their children that they should never, never have children outside of marriage.
There is much more. Read it all here.
by Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council, and Ruth Institute Advisory Board member.
Republicans and Democrats differ on a wide range of issues, but almost all elected officials in Washington, D.C., believe that a key responsibility of both the White House and Congress is keeping the economy running at full-speed, providing an ever-increasing number of jobs, products, and services for the American people. Elections are won or lost on the public’s perception of the ability of a president and his party to implement policies that contribute to a rising Gross Domestic Product and rising standards of living. The parties differ as to the means to achieve these ends. Read more…
September 29th, 2010
Betsy
Often good comes from the bad. Case in point:
By Mary Pilon
Sure, divorcing in tough economic times might involve the use of a Taser, but according to fresh data released on Friday from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the divorce rate is at its lowest point since the early 1970s. And infidelity has continued to decline. Read more…
Economists have known for a long time that discrimination per se accounts for relatively minor part of the wage differences between men and women. By far the largest factor is the impact of children on people’ work/life decisions. Children affect men and women differently. This was already very apparent in data when I started in economics back in the 1970′s.
Now, here is a story from USA Today that demonstrates that the process of wiping out labor market discrimination is complete:
Single, childless women in their twenties are finding success in the city: They’re out-earning their male counterparts in the USA’s biggest metropolitan areas.
Women ages 22 to 30 with no husband and no kids earn a median $27,000 a year, 8% more than comparable men in the top 366 metropolitan areas, according to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau data crunched by the New York research firm Reach Advisors and released Wednesday. The women out-earn men in 39 of the 50 biggest cities and match them in another eight. The disparity is greatest in Atlanta, where young, childless single women earn 21% more than male counterparts.
Take away the impact of children, and voila! No more wage difference. Read more…
You finally win the lottery. How much happier will you be in the long run?
You finally are able to marry that desirable partner you always wanted. How much happier will you be long term?
Tragically, a teenage girl loses a limb in an automobile accident. How much unhappier will she be in the long run?
A young man, convinced he should have been a woman, saves up his money to get a “sex change” operation. How much happier will he be in the long run if he finally gets his way?
The answers to these questions, according to the scientific literature summarized in the article below are surprising.
Read more…
Here is an article about Prof. Doug Allen’s talk at the BYU Symposium. Divorce is important to study, because no one fully anticipated how much changing divorce rules would change many other areas of society. I posted on this lecture, from the conference itself. see here.
Allen said, it’s safe to say between 10 percent and 20 percent of marriages ended as a direct result of no-fault divorce laws. Read more…
I listened to Dr. J’s debate with Objectivist Dr. Yaron Brook about capitalism. I have to say that the debate was quite one sided. Dr. J delivered a polite yet devastating drubbing to Dr. Brook.
Of course, being a fan of debate, especially those with religious/secular themes, I find it hard not to kibbitz. So, here are some comments.
Dr. J opened up with some definitions of capitalism. That definition (taken from “The Victory of Reason” and supplied to her by yours truly, I might add) included several elements of capitalism. She then discussed the Pope’s approval of those elements. At this point, Dr. J could have uttered the words Quod Erat Demonstrandum and walked off the podium. She was gracious enough to continue. Read more…
My debate at Stanford, with Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute, has just been put on our podcast page. Pretty fun debate, pretty friendly debate, too, especially compared with some of my encounters on same sex marriage. I especially like the Q&A at the end of this debate. Enjoy!
Fear the Boom and Bust: A Hayek v Keynes rap anthem
My friends know I’m an economics nerd, so they’ll forgive me for going (slightly) off-topic. Full disclosure: one of the producers of this vid is Russ Roberts, a friend of mine, going back to my post-doc days at the University of Chicago!
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