Why policymakers should grow the family
For those who can find time to read longer articles that analyse the factors underlying continuing economic woes — in particular those of the United States — there are some excellent essays on the Family in America website.
In the journal’s most recent issue (Winter 2011) for example, editor Robert Patterson writes about “Why Policymakers Should Grow the Family, Not Just GDP”. While some economists and governments have jumped onto the “growth is not everything” bandwagon and are promoting quality of life measures, Patterson points out the primary place of the family in the economy of any country.
Here is a taste:
The social sector comprises the realm of society, as John D. Mueller explains in Redeeming Economics, where people relate to each other without contracts or commercial transactions and where they satisfy their profound need for emotional connections and personal relationships. Here, people give gifts and transfer resources with little or no expectation of reciprocity.
The social sector includes, for example, all kinds of voluntary activities that charitable and service organizations perform. For certain, the most important work of the social sector takes place within the enduring bonds of marriage and the family. The GDP thus tells us nothing about an enormous and important sector of economy. While most economists treat the family as an adjunct to the market, there would be no social capital, no private sector, and no public sector without the family. There would be no economy without the social sector. In reality, the private and public sectors are adjuncts to the social sector. Yet the activities of marrying as well as bearing children, which Adam Smith considered among factors of lasting economic growth and true wealth in capitalist societies like the United States, are not counted in the GDP. In fact, many economists look at children, although surely not their own children, as a special kind of consumer good. Likewise, all the vital production of a full-time, at-home mother—caring for and rearing children, food preparation, household management, volunteering, and even homeschooling—does not count in the GDP because it does not involve a financial transaction.
What GDP does count is divorce:
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