»Title An Economic Analysis of the Family »Authors John F. Ermisch »Publisher Princeton University Press »Web site [ see here ] »ISBN 0-691-09667-8, Publish year 2003 »Pages 224 »Abstract THE FAMILY has been undergoing dramatic changes during recent years. In richer countries, marriage and childbearing are occurring much later in people's lives, and they are having fewer children. There is more child-bearing outside marriage, more divorce and more one parent families. In some poorer countries, fertility has fallen sharply, while in others there has been little change. Associated with these developments, there have been changes in the ways in which family members interact with one another, including support for elderly parents or children (e.g. payments after divorce), and with markets. The analysis in this book aims to improve our understanding of how families and markets interact, why important aspects of families have been changing in recent decades and how public policy affects them. It is built on the idea that the standard analytical methods of microeconomics, including the techniques of constrained optimization, can help us to understand resource allocation and the distribution of welfare within the family, intergenerational transfers and transmission, family formation and dissolution and household formation. It also aims to show how economic theories of the family can help to guide and structure empirical analyses of demographic and related phenomena (e.g. labour supply and child support). The book is intended for research students, social scientists and policy makers who wish to learn how economists analyse family issues. The analysis is relevant to family behaviour in rich and poor countries. Examples of studies that apply the theory are provided throughout the book. This chapter outlines the main arguments of the book.