A Survey of Theories of the Family

Ted Bergstrom ()

Papers from University of Michigan, Department of Economics

Abstract: The first section of this review explores the theory of household technology and the associated possibilities for distributiing utility among household members. The second section concerns decision theory within the household. This discussion draws on standard consumer decision theory. The third section of this paper deals with an equilbrium in which families are formed by persons voluntarily choosing mates. This theory is analogous to ``Tiebout theory'' in urban economics, where the objects of choice include not only the amount of public goods supplied in each city, but which individuals live in each place. An aspect of family life that has fewer parallels in the economics of market economies is intrafamilial love and altruism. The final section of this paper reviews a growing theoretical literature on love, altruism and the family.

Date: 1995-06
Note: application/postscript file submitted via ftp in compressed format.
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (95)

Published in the Handbook in Population Economic.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Family/psfiles/famrev.ps (application/postscript)

Related works:
Chapter: A survey of theories of the family (1997)
Working Paper: A Survey of Theories of the Family (1994)
Working Paper: A Survey of Theories of the Family (1993)
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:wop:michec:_027

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from University of Michigan, Department of Economics Ann Arbor Mi, 48109. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().