Examines three decades of data on the relationship between women¿s labor market activity and the income mobility of families that lose a spouse through death, divorce, or separation. Wives¿ labor market activity acts as partial insurance for women and their families against the negative economic consequences of marital dissolution. However, while women who lose their husbands increase their earnings significantly, the number of upwardly mobile families is quite small, and a majority of families actually move down. In addition, they do less well in successive decades. These findings imply that U.S. social and economic policies currently leave considerable gaps in ¿insurance¿ for families in the event of marital dissolution. Tables and graphs.

What new theories, evidence, explanations, and policies have shaped our studies of income distribution in the 21st century? Editors Tony Atkinson and Francois Bourguignon assemble the expertise of leading authorities in this survey of substantive issues. In two volumes they address subjects that were not covered in Volume 1 (2000), such as education, health and experimental economics; and subjects that were covered but where there have been substantial new developments, such as the historical study of income inequality and globalization. Some chapters discuss future growth areas, such as inheritance, the links between inequality and macro-economics and finance, and the distributional implications of climate change. They also update empirical advances and major changes in the policy environment. - The volumes define and organize key areas of income distribution studies - Contributors focus on identifying newly developing questions and opportunities for future research - The authoritative articles emphasize the ways that income mobility and inequality studies have recently gained greater political significance

This book develops a new theoretical framework to examine the issues of economic growth and development. Providing analysis of economic dynamics in a competitive economy under government intervention in infrastructure and income distribution, the book develops a unique analytical framework under the influence of traditional neoclassical growth theory. However, in a departure from neoclassical growth theory it examines both the Solow-Swan and the Ramsey growth models, introducing a utility function which treats consumer choices in ways critically different to previous approaches. Using practical examples and models the book demonstrates how this new direction can effectively analyze the key issues of economic growth, in a compact and comprehensive manner.

Over more than two centuries the development ofeconomic theory has created a wide array of different concepts, theories, and insights. My recent book Capital and Knowledge (Zhang, 1999a) shows how separate economic theories such as the Marxian economics, the Keynesian economics, the general equilibrium theory, and the neoclassical growth theory can be examined within a single theoretical framework. The Capital and Knowledge constructs an economic theory to account for the phenomena explained by the main economic theories (of national economies) in a unified manner. It tries to draw together the disparate branches of economics into a single organized system ofknowledge. This book is a part of my economic theory with endogenous population, capital, knowledge, preferences, sexual division of labor and consumption, institutions, economic structures and exchange values over time and space (Zhang, 1996a). As an extension of the Capital and Knowledge, which is focused on the dynamics of national economies, this book is to construct a theory of international trade. We are concerned with dynamic relations between international division of labor, division of consumption and determination of prices structure in global economy. We examine dynamic interdependence between capital accumulation, knowledge creation and utilization, economic growth, price structures and international trade patterns under free competition. Our theory is constructed on the basis of a few concepts within a compact framework.

Divorce law changes made in the 1970s affected marital formation, dissolution, and bargaining within marriage. By altering the terms of the marital contract these legal changes impacted the incentives for women to enter and remain in the labor force. Whereas earlier work had suggested that the impact of unilateral divorce on female employment depended critically on laws governing property division, I show that these results are not robust to alternative specifications and controls. I find instead that unilateral divorce led to an increase in both married and unmarried female labor force participation, regardless of the pre-existing laws regarding property division.

This volume wil be an invaluable, up-to-date, one-stop resource for economists and those involved in the social sciences and gender studies, as well as policy makers themselves.

Handbook of the Economics of the Family, Volume One includes comprehensive surveys of the current state of the economics literaure in the field, prepared by leading scholars, with a particular empahsis on the most recent developments in each area. Chapters cover Culture and the family; Mating markets; Household decisions and intra-household distributions; The economics of fertility: a new era; Families, labor markets, and policy; Family background, neighborhoods, and intergenerational mobility; The great transition: Kuznets facts for family-economists; An institutional perspective on the economics of the family. - An economics approach to changing family arrangements - Understanding of inequality and intergenerational mobility - Evolution of gender roles within families and across societies

Over more than two centuries the development of economic theory has created a wide array of different theories, concepts and results. Nevertheless, there is no general theory, which mrifies these varied theories into a comprehensive one. Economics has been split between partial and conflicting representations of the functioning of market economies. We have a collection of separate theories such as the Marxian economics, the Keynesian economics, the general equilibrium theory, and the neoclassical growth theory. These diverse economic theories have co-existed but not in a structured relationship with each other. Economic students are trained to understand economic phenomena by severally incompatible theories one by one in the same course. Since the end of Second Wodd War many crises in economic theory have been announced. The economist experienced the crisis of the general equilibrium economics, the crisis of the neoclassical growth economics, the crisis of the Keynesian economics, not to mention the crises of the Marxian economics. It is quite reasonable to expect the loss of confidence in theoretical economics even among professional economists after so many crises in a very short period of time. But a crisis offers new opportmrities for change, either for better or for worse. The past crises in theoretical economics may be perceived as a historical opportmrity to construct a general economic theory by which the traditional theories are integrated into a higher whole.