Love, Money, and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids

Doepke, Matthias; Zilibotti, Fabrizio

ISBN 10: 0691171513 / ISBN 13: 9780691171517

Published by Princeton University Press, 2019

About this Item

May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.

Seller Inventory # G0691171513I4N00

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Love, Money, and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691171513
• ISBN 13: 9780691171517
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Weight: 1.83 pounds

About this title

Synopsis

An international and historical look at how parenting choices change in the face of economic inequality

Parents everywhere want their children to be happy and do well. Yet how parents seek to achieve this ambition varies enormously. For instance, American and Chinese parents are increasingly authoritative and authoritarian, whereas Scandinavian parents tend to be more permissive. Why? Love, Money, and Parenting investigates how economic forces and growing inequality shape how parents raise their children. From medieval times to the present, and from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden to China and Japan, Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti look at how economic incentives and constraints―such as money, knowledge, and time―influence parenting practices and what is considered good parenting in different countries.

Through personal anecdotes and original research, Doepke and Zilibotti show that in countries with increasing economic inequality, such as the United States, parents push harder to ensure their children have a path to security and success. Economics has transformed the hands-off parenting of the 1960s and ’70s into a frantic, overscheduled activity. Growing inequality has also resulted in an increasing “parenting gap” between richer and poorer families, raising the disturbing prospect of diminished social mobility and fewer opportunities for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. In nations with less economic inequality, such as Sweden, the stakes are less high, and social mobility is not under threat. Doepke and Zilibotti discuss how investments in early childhood development and the design of education systems factor into the parenting equation, and how economics can help shape policies that will contribute to the ideal of equal opportunity for all.

Love, Money, and Parenting presents an engrossing look at the economics of the family in the modern world.

About the Author

Matthias Doepke is professor of economics at Northwestern University. He lives in Evanston, Illinois. Fabrizio Zilibotti is the Tuntex Professor of International and Development Economics at Yale University. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.