eprintid: 33507 rev_number: 15 eprint_status: archive userid: 1482 importid: 105 dir: disk0/00/03/35/07 datestamp: 2019-12-06 10:51:14 lastmod: 2023-06-08 07:46:09 status_changed: 2023-06-08 07:41:29 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Alger, Ingela creators_name: Cox, Donald creators_idrefppn: 234173319 creators_halaffid: 1002422 ; 441569 title: Evolution of the Family: Theory and Implications for Economics ispublished: pub subjects: subjects_ECO abstract: Which parent can be expected to be more altruistic toward their child, the mother or father? All else equal, can we expect older generation members to be more solicitous of younger family members or vice versa? Policy interventions often target recipients by demographic status: more money being put in the hands of mothers, say, or transfers of income from young to old via public pensions. Economics makes predictions about pecuniary incentives and behavior but tends to be agnostic about how, say, a post-menopausal grandmother might behave, just because she is a post-menopausal grandmother. Evolutionary theory fills this gap by analyzing how preferences of family members emerge from the Darwinian exigencies of “survive and reproduce.” Coin of the realm is so-called “inclusive fitness,” reproductive success of oneself plus that of relatives, weighted by closeness of the relationship. Appending basic biological traits onto considerations of inclusive fitness generates predictions about preferences of family members. A post-menopausal grandmother with a daughter just starting a family is predicted to care more about her daughter than the daughter cares about her, for example. Evolutionary theory predicts that mothers tend to be more altruistic toward children than fathers, and that close relatives would be inclined to provide more support to one another than distant relatives. An original case study is provided, which explains the puzzle of diverging marriage rates by education in terms of heterogeneity in preferences for commitment. Economists are justifiably loathe to invoke preferences to explain trends, since preference-based explanations can be concocted to explain just about anything. But the evolutionary approach does not permit just any invocation of preferences. The dictates of “survive and reproduce” sharply circumscribe the kinds of preference-related arguments that are admissible. date: 2019-11 date_type: published publisher: Oxford University Press USA id_number: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190625979.013.439 official_url: http://tse-fr.eu/pub/123747 faculty: tse divisions: tse language: en has_fulltext: FALSE doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190625979.013.439 physical_desc: 32 view_date_year: 2019 full_text_status: none publication: Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Economics and Finance refereed: TRUE oai_identifier: oai:tse-fr.eu:123747 harvester_local_overwrite: publish_to_hal harvester_local_overwrite: faculty harvester_local_overwrite: pending harvester_local_overwrite: publisher harvester_local_overwrite: id_number harvester_local_overwrite: doi harvester_local_overwrite: creators_idrefppn harvester_local_overwrite: abstract harvester_local_overwrite: creators_halaffid oai_lastmod: 2023-05-26T09:43:48Z oai_set: tse site: ut1 publish_to_hal: FALSE citation: Alger, Ingela and Cox, Donald (2019) Evolution of the Family: Theory and Implications for Economics. Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Economics and Finance.