Economics of Gender, Race, Family

1
Economics of Gender, Race, Family
Lesson 1 Trends, Definitions

• Victoria Vernon, Ph.D
• Empire State College

2
Changes for Women, 1960-2000
3
Changes for Men, 1960-2000
4
16.7 in 2005
5
(No Transcript)
6
What is Economics?

• Economics studies human behavior
• Central question of Economics
• How do we allocate LIMITED RESOURCES to
  satisfy the most pressing of our UNLIMITED
  WANTS?
• Limited
• Money
• Time
• Effort
• We cant always get everything we want
• How do we make choices over alternatives?

7
Every Choice Has a Cost

• OPPORTUNITY COST
• value of best alternative foregone
• 1. OC of taking 1 hour off work lost hourly
  wage (ex20)
• 2. OK of being a full time mother for a year
• lost income and work experience (ex 90,000)
• Find opportunity cost of
• Taking this course
• Watching TV for 3 hours
• Oprah Winfreys week of vacation
• Spending 200 on a pair of shoes
• Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well.
  Always?

8
How do we make choices?

• People are SELF-interested
• Maximize our own joy, happiness, UTILITY
• subjective measure of joy, pleasure,
  happiness, satisfaction from consuming
  goods/services
• People are RATIONAL
• respond to incentives
• compare COSTS and BENEFITS of alternatives,
• select one with highest NET BENEFITS
• Examples of decisions
• Buy coffee or tea?
• Get married or not?
• Spend evening at home, rent a movie, or go to a
  show?

9
Rational decision example Go to college?

• Benefits
• higher future income 100,000
• lower insurance rates 10,000
• better health 50,000
• other ?
• Total benefits 160,000
• Benefitsgt Costs

• Costs
• tuition, books 20,000
• lost income 100,000
• Total cost 120,000

10
Increase in Educational Attainment
11
Rate of Return Per Year of College Education
12
(No Transcript)
13
Labor Force Participation Rate
Labor force employed unemployed Unemployed
people actively looking for work
Number of people in the labor force (those
working or looking for work)

LFPR
100
Noninstitutionalized working age (age 16 and
older) population
For example, in February 2007
152,784,000
LFPR

100
66.2
230,834,000
14

• NOT in the labor force
• children
• disabled
• retired
• housewives/househusbands
• full time students
• unemployed, not looking for work (discouraged
  workers)

15
Labor Force Participation Rates
16
(No Transcript)
17
Historical Experience of College Women

• Research by Goldin
• Family and work experiences of college-educated
  throughout 1st half of 20th century.
• For that 1st birth cohort
• For both men and women, college rare around year
  1900
• For women very rare to combine work and family.
• 1/3 of women who went to college never married.
• Nearly half never had kids (including ¼ who did
  marry).
• Occupations 60 school teachers.
• As move forward by cohort college-educated women
  more and more likely to marry and have kids.
• From then to now
• First choice was work or family.
• Then choice was work and family.
• Now with so many more college-educated women,
  choice is career then family.