Arbeitspapier
The power of the family
The structure of family relationships influences economic behavior and attitudes. We define our measure of family ties using individual responses from the World Value Survey regarding the role of the family and the love and respect that children need to have for their parents for over 70 countries. We show that strong family ties imply more reliance on the family as an economic unit which provides goods and services and less on the market and on the government for social insurance. With strong family ties home production is higher, labor force participation of women and youngsters, and geographical mobility, lower. Families are larger (higher fertility and higher family size) with strong family ties, which is consistent with the idea of the family as an important economic unit. We present evidence on cross country regressions. To assess causality we look at the behavior of second generation immigrants in the US and we employ a variable based on the grammatical rule of pronoun drop as an instrument for family ties. Our results overall indicate a significant influence of the strength of family ties on economic outcomes.
- Language
-
Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
-
Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 2750
- Classification
-
Wirtschaft
- Subject
-
Familienökonomik
Familiensoziologie
Gemeinschaft
Wirtschaftswachstum
Welt
- Event
-
Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
-
Alesina, Alberto
Giuliano, Paola
- Event
-
Veröffentlichung
- (who)
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Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
- (where)
-
Bonn
- (when)
-
2007
- Handle
- URN
-
urn:nbn:de:101:1-20080402249
- Last update
-
10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Alesina, Alberto
- Giuliano, Paola
- Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Time of origin
- 2007