Many economists have until fairly recently treated the family as a "black box" -- analysing the behaviour of "the family" rather than of the individuals within the family. In this paper, we outline the new "collective" approach to modelling family behaviour which makes explicit the fact that...

One major objection to neoclassical economic theory raised by feminist economists is that traditional theory neglects what goes on within families. This paper examines the policy relevance of this feminist critique by asking whether our understanding of the poverty experiences of individual...

This paper explores the connection between the labour market and child overweight status in Canada. The labour market is a social institution which plays a critical role in determining how families live their day-to-day lives, for example, how much time and which parts of the day are available...

The upbringing of children is modeled as a modified principal agent problem in which children attempt to maximize their own well-being when faced with a parenting strategy chosen by the parent, to maximize parent's perception of family well-being. Thus, children as well as parents are players,...

High on the research agenda of feminist economists is the development of better models of what goes on within families. This paper contributes by conducting empirical tests of the impact of social/institutional factors on behavior within marriage. As one example, “divorce-threat” bargaining...

This paper uses longitudinal microdata from the Statistics Canada National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) spanning the years 1994 through 2004 to study patterns of family income experienced by a cohort of 7163 Canadian children for most of their childhood. Five principal...

This paper uses longitudinal microdata from the Statistics Canada National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) to study the family income dynamics of Canadian children from the time they are 4 or 5 until they are 14 or 15. Dynamics of family income have been studied less often than...

Using microdata from the Luxembourg Income Study, we assess "time crunch" for families with children in Canada, Germany, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S. Both theory and empirical evidence suggest that both time and money are important inputs to the well-being of parents and children. We present...

L'education des enfants est modelisee en tant que probleme principal-agent modifie ou l'enfant tache de maximiser son propre bien-etre face a une strategie parentale destinee a maximiser la perception qu'a le parent du bien-etre de la famille. Ainsi, les enfants et les parents sont tous des...