Hazel Kyrk, Eugenics, and Consumption Standards

Edith Kuiper

A chapter in Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology: Including a Symposium on Hazel Kyrk's:A Theory of Consumption100 Years after Publication, 2024, vol. 41D, pp 47-67 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: Hazel Kyrk, one of the first women economists at the Economic Department of the University of Chicago and author ofA Theory of Consumption(1923), conducted groundbreaking research for the Bureau of Home Economics of the US Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Kyrk made a considerable contribution to the development of standards for a “decent living,” the Consumer Price Index, and the conceptualization of what would later turn into the definition of the poverty line. This chapter evaluates Kyrk’s use of eugenic notions of gender and race that were widely used in Kyrk’s day. This chapter shows that eugenic reasoning impacts Kyrk’s theoretical work only superficially but does structure her research on consumption standards through her focus on the white middle-class family as the unit of analysis for consumer behavior. This chapter also makes clear that the American Institutionalist approach to consumer behavior, rather than marginalized and side-tracked due to a lack of theoretical progress, was relegated to the margins of economics science together with the research of women economists into Home Economics departments and policy research at government institutions.

Keywords: Hazel Kyrk; consumer research; home economics; women economists; consumption standards; institutionalist approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... 3-41542024000041D005
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:rhetzz:s0743-41542024000041d005

DOI: 10.1108/S0743-41542024000041D005

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().