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)
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

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Alesina, Alberto
  • Giuliano, Paola
  • Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Time of origin

  • 2007

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