A Vocation in the Family Household?

AbstractWe provide a critique of the standard methodology for inequality measurement, which makes welfare comparisons between households by deflating household income and consumption with an equivalence scale. We argue that this leads to support for tax/transfer policies that significantly disadvantage low to middle income households and second earners—predominantly women. Its main limitations are that it takes an overly-simplistic approach to household production, bases its welfare measurements on joint household income, and has no theory of the family household. We point the way to an alternative procedure by presenting a theoretical model of the family household that derives duality-based welfare measures. In the light of current data limitations we propose, as a second best, primary earner income as a superior base to joint income for across-household welfare comparisons in policy formulation. We also emphasise the importance of taking the family life cycle into account when making such comparisons. We use the Australian income tax system and Australian income and tax data for a detailed comparison of the standard approach with our proposed alternative.

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The Family, Household and Minor Lineage 1

The Konkomba of Northern Ghana ◽

10.4324/9780429486241-10 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 161-209

Author(s):

David Tait

Keyword(s):

Family Household ◽

The Family

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The Loving Community

Caritas ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198868132.003.0002 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 31-59

Author(s):

Katie Barclay

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Early Modern ◽

Social Order ◽

Early Modern Europe ◽

Cultural Norm ◽

Family Household ◽

The Family ◽

Modern Europe ◽

A Site

Caritas was an idea with resonance across early modern Europe, but given shape and form within particular national or religious contexts. This chapter introduces how the Scottish Kirk envisioned caritas as an embodied ethic—an experience of love that was manifested in deportment, thought, feeling, and behaviour—as well as its widespread take-up as a cultural norm. It particularly highlights that the family—the holy household—was imagined as the basis of a social order founded on caritas and introduces how the idea of caritas shaped the practice of the family-household relationships in eighteenth-century Scotland. It explores how the family was located not just as a site of patriarchal discipline, but also of peace and comfort, where fighting and quarrelling (excesses of passion) should be minimized. The family-household was not formed in private, however: its loving behaviours were interpreted and given meaning by a watching community.

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The budget of a Corsican stem family

Continuity and Change ◽

10.1017/s0268416002004216 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

pp. 233-251 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

ANTOINE MARCHINI

Keyword(s):

Detailed Analysis ◽

Family Member ◽

Animal Husbandry ◽

Well Being ◽

Economic Activities ◽

Single Item ◽

Family Household ◽

The Family ◽

Age And Sex ◽

Economic Well Being

This article provides a detailed analysis of the income and expenditure of a stem family household from Bastelica, Corsica, based on information collected in 1867 and 1887 according to the scheme recommended by Frédéric Le Play. The budget indicates the work undertaken by each member of the family and which economic activities were most valuable to the family in terms of the income they generated and the level of profit. The primary resource of the family was its members, as the family used almost no non-family labour. The composition of the household, and the distribution of its members in terms of age and sex, were therefore critical for its economic well-being. Members of the family contributed their labour according to their sex, age and place within the household. Males were better paid than females but each son received more than his father and the daughters were better paid than their mother. Apart from the father, the less well paid the family member, the longer the time they were at work. In addition, the two highly paid sons were unemployed for more than half of the year. This provided a reserve of labour in the event of a rise in the ratio of consumers to workers within the family. The economy of the family was based on the exploitation of its patrimony and on animal husbandry. Food constituted the largest single item of expenditure but the diet of this family did not provide the 2,800 calories of the average diet in France between 1855 and 1874.

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Work, Gender, and Immiseration in South Africa and India

Review of Radical Political Economics ◽

10.1177/0486613416666530 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 50 (2) ◽

pp. 332-348 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Sirisha C. Naidu ◽

Lyn Ossome

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Labor Market ◽

Social Reproduction ◽

The State ◽

Growth Path ◽

Female Labor ◽

Family Household ◽

Female Workers ◽

Reproduction System ◽

The Family

In this paper, we broaden Marx’s immiseration thesis to articulate social reproduction under capitalist growth. Specifically, we compare the female labor market in the context of the wage economy, the family-household, and the state, three institutions that influence the production-reproduction system. Our observations lead us to conclude that the neoliberal growth path has exacerbated inequities in the opportunities for female workers in both countries. Our findings affirm both the differentiation and homogenization of conditions of reproduction under capitalist exploitation.

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"She Was My Kind of Scientist"

Monthly Review ◽

10.14452/mr-071-04-2019-08_2 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 12-22

Author(s):

Lise Vogel

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

Review Essay ◽

The Political ◽

Women's Liberation ◽

Family Household ◽

The North ◽

Women’S Liberation ◽

Unpaid Labor ◽

Lightning Bolt ◽

The Family

In the late 1960s, the North American women's liberation movement was reaching a highpoint of activity, its militancy complemented by a flourishing literature. This was the environment into which Margaret Benston's 1969 Monthly Review essay, "The Political Economy of Women's Liberation," struck like a lightning bolt. At the time, many in the movement were describing women's situation in terms of sociological roles, functions, and structures—reproduction, socialization, psychology, sexuality, and the like. In contrast, Benston proposed an analysis in Marxist terms of women's unpaid labor in the family household. In this way, she definitively shifted the framework for discussion of women's oppression onto the terrain of Marxist political economy.

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Patrilocality and Early Marital Co-residence in Rural China, 1955–85

The China Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0305741000040789 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 130 ◽

pp. 378-391 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

William Lavely ◽

Xinhua Ren

Keyword(s):

Living Arrangements ◽

Nuclear Family ◽

Extended Family ◽

Rural China ◽

Chinese Family ◽

Family Farming ◽

Family Household ◽

Family Economy ◽

The Family ◽

Extended Households

The story of the rural Chinese family household in the post-Mao period is generally told in one of three ways, which might be labelled modernization, tradition restored, and demographic determinism. Modernization parallels the family theories of classical sociology: economic development and education tend to undermine extended family living arrangements by instilling nuclear family preferences, while the relaxation of migration restrictions allows young men to seek their fortune away from home. “Tradition restored” sees collectivization as having undermined the foundation of the extended family household, the family economy. The return of family farming has, in this view, restored the conditions under which the extended family can flourish. The demographic determinisi view assumes that family preferences persist but that demographic structures change. Rising life expectancies and declining fertility should increase rates of family extension, since smaller families mean that there will be fewer brothers available to live with a surviving parent. Thus as the birth control cohorts come of age, the prevalence of extended households should increase.

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Material Geographies of House Societies: Reconsidering Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey

Cambridge Archaeological Journal ◽

10.1017/s0959774318000240 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 28 (4) ◽

pp. 565-590 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Ian Kuijt

Keyword(s):

Single Family ◽

Social Unit ◽

Family Household ◽

Internal Organization ◽

The Past ◽

The Family ◽

The Future ◽

House Societies ◽

The Dead ◽

Family House

This paper explores how people within Neolithic villages were connected to co-resident multi-family households, and considers the potential material footprint of multi-family households within Neolithic villages. Drawing upon data from Çatalhöyük, I suggest that Neolithic communities were organized around multiple competing and cooperating Houses, similar to House Societies, where house members resided in clusters of abutting buildings, all largely the same size and with similar internal organization. These space were deeply connected to telling the generative narratives of the House as a historical and genealogical social unit, including the lives and actions of the ancestors, and in some cases embedding them physically within the fabric of the building. Çatalhöyük multi-family House members decorated some important rooms with display elaboration that focused on the past, the future and the family, while the dead from the households, who in many ways were still alive and part of the ancestral House, lived beneath the floor. This study underlines that researchers need to consider social scales beyond the single-family household and consider how the multi-family House existed as an organizational foundation within Neolithic villages.

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The Family, Household, and Minor Lineage of the Konkomba

Africa ◽

10.2307/1156671 ◽

1956 ◽

Vol 26 (4) ◽

pp. 332-342 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

David Tait

Keyword(s):

Social Control ◽

Family Household ◽

Major Lineage ◽

The Family ◽

Group A ◽

Opening Paragraph ◽

A Minor ◽

The Way

Opening ParagraphSince the household contains members drawn from the larger minor lineage group, we may expect to find that it functions within the framework of the latter. This is indeed the way in which Konkomba think of the household—as part of something larger, as something that is now isolated from and now merged in the larger group. The phrase ‘Ti je mfum mba’ (we are one) may refer to a household, a minor lineage group, a major lineage group, a clan, a tribe or the whole Konkomba people. When speaking of co-operation they speak in terms of the minor lineage group rather than in terms of the household. We shall try to differentiate the role of the household as a unit of reciprocal help, of social control, and of instruction, &c.

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