The Price of Everything

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The Price of Everything Page 28

by Eduardo Porter


  73-77 The American Trade-Off: Data on Americans’ stagnant happiness are found in Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer, “What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?” Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 40, No. 2, June 2002, pp. 402-435; and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Society at a Glance,” 2009 edition, p. 121. Evidence on how happiness increases as income rises around the world is in Ronald Inglehart, Roberto Foa, Christopher Peterson, and Christian Welzel, “Development, Freedom, and Rising Happiness, A Global Perspective (1981-2007),” Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2008, pp. 264-285; Ronald Inglehart, Roberto Foa, and Christian Welzel, “Social Change, Freedom and Rising Happiness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Internet Appendix (www.worldvaluessurveyorg/wvs/articles/folder_published/article_base_106/files/trends .doc. , accessed 08/16/2010); Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, “Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2008; and Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, “High Income Improves Evaluation of Life but Not Emotional WellBeing,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, advance online publication, September 7, 2010 (www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1011492107, accessed 09/07/2010). Data on wealth and happiness in the United States and Europe is found in the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook of October 2009 (www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2009/02/weodata/index.aspx, accessed 08/16/2010); “L’Opinion publique dans l’Union Européenne—Automne 2009,” Eurobarométre, February 2010 (ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb72/eb72_en.htm , accessed 08/16/2010); and General Social Survey (www.norc.org/GSS+Website/Browse+GSS+Variables/Collections/, accessed 08/16/2010). Data on inequality and happiness in the United States come from Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, “Long-Run Changes in the Wage Structure: Narrowing, Widening, Polarizing,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2007); Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, op. cit.; and OECD, op. cit. The study on Texan women is found in Daniel Kahneman and Alan Krueger, “Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 20, No. 1, Winter 2006, pp. 3-24. The relation between leisure time and happiness in rich nations draws from “Measuring Leisure in OECD Countries,” in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Society at a Glance—OECD Social Indicators 2009 (www.oecd.org/els/social/indicators/SAG, accessed 08/08/2010), pp. 19-41; Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch, “Gross National Happiness as an Answer to the Easterlin Paradox?,” Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 86, No. 1), pp. 22-42, April 2008. Data on happiness over the life cycle are found in David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald, “Is Well-being U-shaped over the Life-Cycle?,” Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 66, 2008, pp. 1733-1749. Data on how we work too much, sleep too little, and spend too little time on meals are found in Mathias Basner, Kenneth M. Fomberstein, Farid M. Razavi, Siobhan Banks, Jeffrey H. William, Roger R. Rosa, and David F. Dinges, “American Time Use Survey: Sleep Time and Its Relationship to Waking Activities,” Sleep, Vol. 30, No. 9, 2007; Stephen S. Roach, “Working Better or Just Harder?,” New York Times, February 14, 2000; and Dan Hammermesh, “Time to Eat: Household Production Under Increasing Income Inequality,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 89, No. 4, November 2007, pp. 852-863.

  77-78 La Joie de Vivre: The impact of higher taxes and stronger unions on working hours in Europe is discussed in Edward Prescott, “Why Do Americans Work So Much More Than Europeans?,” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review, Vol. 28, No. 1, July 2004, pp. 2-13; Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser, and Bruce Sacerdote, “Work and Leisure in the U.S. and Europe: Why So Different?” NBER Working Paper, April 2005; and Olivier Blanchard, “The Many Dimensions of Work, Leisure, and Employment: Thoughts at the End of the Conference,” comments on papers presented at the Rodolfo DeBenedetti conference on “Are Europeans Lazy, or Are Americans Crazy?” Portovenere, Italy, June 2006. Data on the impact of time use on happiness is from Ronald Inglehart, Roberto Foa, and Christian Welzel, “Social Change, Freedom and Rising Happiness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Internet Appendix (at www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs/articles/folder_published/article_base_106/files/trends.doc, accessed 08/16/2010); “Measuring Leisure in OECD Countries,” in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, op. cit.; and Alan Krueger, Daniel Kahneman, David Schkade, Norbert Schwarz, and Arthur Stone, “National Time Accounting: The Currency of Life,” Princeton University Department of Economics Working Paper, March 2008.

  79-86 The Price of Women: Data on the popularity of polygamy through history found in Walter Scheidel, “Monogamy and Polygamy in Greece, Rome, and World History,” Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, June 2008; Theodore Bergstrom, “Economics in a Family Way,” Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 34, 1996, pp. 1903-1934; and Gary Becker, A Treatise on the Family , enlarged edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 81. God’s insistence on King Solomon’s marrying only Hebrew women comes from the Bible, 1 Kings 11:1-2. Support for the genetic basis of polygamy found in M. F. Hammer, F. L. Mendez, M. P. Cox, A. E. Woerner, and J. D. Wall, “Sex-Biased Evolutionary Forces Shape Genomic Patterns of Human Diversity,” PLoS Genetics, Vol. 4, No. 9, 2008 (www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1000202, accessed 08/08/2010). The views of David Hume and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on polygamy are found in David Hume, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, Part I, Essay XIX, in The Philosophical Works of David Hume, Vol. 3, edited by Adam Black, William Tait, and Charles Tait, 1826; and Oriana Fallaci, “An Interview with Khomeini,” New York Times Magazine, October 7, 1979. Mating strategies of bonobos and birds can be found in Matt Ridley, The Red Queen (London: Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 203-235. Insights on men and women’s adulterous choices can be found in Lena Edlund, “Marriage: Past, Present, Future?” CESifo Economic Studies, Vol. 52, No. 4, 2006, pp. 621-639. Information on the purpose and prevalence of bride prices can be found in Steven Gaulin and James Boster, “Dowry as Female Competition,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 92, 1992, pp. 994-1005; Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, “Women’s Strategies in Polygamous Marriage,” Human Nature, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1992, pp. 45-70; Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, “Kipsigis Bridewealth Payments,” in Laura Betzig, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, and Paul Turke, eds., Human Reproductive Behavior (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 65-82; Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, “Bridewealth and Its Correlates: Quantifying Changes over Time,” Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, No. 4, August/October 1995, pp. 573-603. Benefits of banning polygamy are laid out in Michele Tertilt, “Polygyny, Fertility, and Savings,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 113, December 2005. Laura Betzig’s sentiments on being John Kennedy’s third wife are in Matt Ridley, op. cit., p. 178. The insight that women are valued more in polygamous societies comes from Theodore C. Bergstrom, “On the Economics of Polygamy,” University of California at Santa Barbara Working Paper, 1994; and Steven Gaulin and James Boster, “Dowry as Female Competition,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 92, 1992, pp. 994-1005. The discussion on why polygamy disappeared is drawn from Eric D. Gould, Omer Moav, and Avi Simhon, “The Mystery of Monogamy,” American Economic Review, Vol. 98, No. 1, 2008; Walter Scheidel, op. cit.; and Erik Eckholm, “Boys Cast Out by Polygamists Find Help,” New York Times, September 9, 2007.

  86-93 The Value of Women’s Work: Data on the price of divorce in ancient Sumer can be found in James Baker, Women’s Rights in Old Testament Times (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992). The code of Hammurabi can be found at www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/CODE.HTM. The discussion of adultery in the Trobriand Islands is in Bronislaw Malinowski and Havelock Ellis, The Sexual Life of Savages in North Central Melanesia, Kessinger Publishing, 1929, p. 143. Arthur Lewis’s quote is in Arthur Lewis, The Theory of Economic Growth (London: Allen and Unwin, 1963), p. 422. The description of the pattern of how women join the workforce as countries develop is drawn from Claudia Goldin, “The
U-Shaped Female Labor Force Function in Economic Development and Economic History,” NBER Working Paper, April 1994; Francine Blau, Marianne Ferber, and Anne Winkler, The Economics of Men, Women and Work, 5th edition (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006), p. 21; and Sudhin K. Mukhopadhyay, “Adapting Household Behavior to Agricultural Technology in West Bengal, India: Wage Labor, Fertility, and Child Schooling Determinants,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 43, No. 1, October 1994, pp. 91-115. The narrative of women’s march into the workplace in the United States is drawn from Betsey Stevenson, “Divorce Law and Women’s Labor Supply,” NBER Working Paper, September 2008; Claudia Goldin, “The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women’s Employment, Education and Family,” Ely Lecture, American Economic Association Annual Meeting, January 2006; Paul Douglas and Erika Schoenberg, “Studies in the Supply Curve of Labor: The Relation in 1929 Between Average Earnings in American Cities and the Proportions Seeking Employment,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 45, No. 1, February 1937, pp. 45-79; Jacob Mincer, “Labor Force Participation of Married Women: A Study of Labor Supply,” in H. Gregg Lewis, ed., Aspects of Labor Economics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 63-97. The description of Sandra Day O’Connor’s job search is in Kamil Dada, “Supreme Court Justice Pushes Public Service,” Stanford Daily, April 22, 2008. The impact of changes in the labor force on women’s bodies is drawn from Nigel Barber, “The Slender Ideal and Eating Disorders: An Interdisciplinary ‘Telescope’ Model,” International Journal of Eating Disorders, Vol. 23, 1998, pp. 295-307; Brett Silverstein, Lauren Perdue, Barbara Peterson, Linda Vogel, and Deborah A. Fantini, “Possible Causes of the Thin Standard of Bodily Attractiveness for Women,” International Journal of Eating Disorders, Vol. 5, No. 5, 1986, pp. 907- 916; Judith L. Anderson, Charles B. Crawford, and Tracy Lindberg, “Was the Duchess of Windsor Right? A Cross-Cultural Review of the Socioecology of Ideals of Female Body Shape,” Ethology and Sociobiology, Vol. 13, 1992, pp. 197-227. The drastic changes in the expectations and achievements of American women over the last century are outlined in Claudia Goldin, Lawrence Katz, and Ilyana Kuziemko, “The Homecoming of American College Women: The Reversal of the College Gender GAP,” Working Paper, September 2005; Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn, “Changes in the Labor Supply Behavior of Married Women 1980-2000,” NBER Working Paper, March 2005. Data on women’s educational attainment are drawn from T. D. Snyder and S. A. Dillow, Digest of Education Statistics 2009 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, April 2010) (nces.ed.gov/Programs/digest/, accessed 08/08/2010). Data on men’s and women’s income are from the Census Bureau (www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/people/index.html, table p. 5, accessed 08/17/2010). Analysis of the gender gap in labor participation is found in Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey” (www.bls.gov/cps, accessed 08/08/2010). The discussion of the gender wage gap draws from Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Women’s to Men’s Earnings Ratio by Age, 2009” (www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2010/ted_20100708_data.htm, accessed 08/08/2010). The discussion about the gender gap among MBA graduates comes from Marianne Bertrand, Claudia Goldin, and Lawrence F. Katz, “Dynamics of the Gender Gap for Young Professionals in the Financial and Corporate Sectors,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Vol. 2, No. 3, July 2010, pp. 228-255.

  93-97 Renegotiating the Marriage Bargain: The description of changes in women’s attitudes toward career and household work draws from Valerie Ramey, “Time Spent in Home Production in the 20th Century: New Estimates from Old Data,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 69, No. 1, March 2009, pp. 1-47; Samuel Preston and Caroline Sten Hartnett, “The Future of American Fertility,” NBER Working Paper, November 2008. Data about changes in fertility patterns come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Vital Statistics Report, Vol. 57, No. 12, March 18, 2009; Samuel H. Preston and Caroline Sten Hartnett, op. cit.; American Time Use Survey, 2009 (www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1_2009.pdf, accessed 07/18/2010); and U.S. Census Bureau, “The Fertility of American Women: 2006,” Washington, August 2008 (Supplemental tables 1 and 2). Statistics on fiancée and spouse visas are drawn from Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, “2008 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics,” Washington, August 2009. The leftward tilt of American women’s political preferences is described in Lena Edlund, Laila Haider, and Rohini Pande, “Unmarried Parenthood and Redistributive Politics,” Journal of the European Economic Association, Vol. 3, No. 1, March 2005, pp. 95-119. The gender difference in votes for President Barack Obama in the 2008 elections is detailed in “Women’s Vote Clinches Election Victory: 8 Million More Women Than Men Voted for Obama,” Institute for Women’s Policy Research Press Release, November 6, 2008 (at www.iwpr.org/pdf/08ElectionRelease.pdf, accessed 08/18/2010). Data on women’s labor supply around the world comes from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Factbook (www.oecd-ilibrary.org/content/book/factbook-2010-en, accessed 07/18/2010). Data on fertility in the industrial countries is drawn from the Population Reference Bureau (at www.prb.org/Datafinder/Topic/Bar.aspx?sort=v&order=d&variable=117, accessed 07/18/2010).

  97-101 The New Mating Market: The story about The Quiverfull was aired by National Public Radio on Morning Edition on March 25, 2009 (www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102005062&ft=1&f=1001, accessed 07/18/2010). Data on government pension replacement rates and their impact on fertility comes from Olivia S. Mitchell and John W. R. Phillips, “Social Security Replacement Rates for Alternative Earnings Benchmarks,” University of Michigan Retirement Research Center Working Paper, May 2006; and Francesco C. Billari and Vincenzo Galasso, “What Explains Fertility? Evidence from Italian Pension Reforms,” CEPR Discussion Paper, October 2008. Arguments about work’s impact on fertility in Europe are drawn from Bruce Sacerdote and James Feyrer, “Will the Stork Return to Europe and Japan? Understanding Fertility Within Developed Nations,” NBER Working Paper, June 2008; and Samuel Preston and Caroline Sten Hartnett, op. cit. Evidence of the financial benefits of marriage is found in Martin Browning, Pierre-André Chiappori, and Arthur Lewbel, “Estimating Consumption Economies of Scale, Adult Equivalence Scales, and Household Bargaining Power,” Economics Series Working Paper, Oxford University Department of Economics, August 2006; Graziella Bertocchi and Marianna Brunetti, “Marriage and Other Risky Assets: A Portfolio Approach,” CEPR Discussion Paper, February 2009; Libertad González and Berkay Özcan, “The Risk of Divorce and Household Saving Behavior,” IZA Working Paper, September 2008. Data on the relative earnings of husbands and wives are found in Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, “Annual Social and Economic Supplements, Table F-22: Married-Couple Families with Wives’ Earnings Greater Than Husbands’ Earnings: 1988 to 2008” (www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/families/index.html, accessed 07/18/ 2010). Data on increased marriage rates among college graduates come from Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson, “Marriage and Divorce, Changes and Their Driving Forces,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 21, No. 2, Spring 2007, pp. 27-52; and Adam Isen and Betsey Stevenson, “Women’s Education and Family Behavior: Trends in Marriage, Divorce and Fertility,” NBER Working Paper, February 2010. Evidence of mothers’ recent change in attitudes toward work is found in Pew Research Center, “Fewer Mothers Prefer Full-time Work,” July 2007; and Sharon R. Cohany and Emy Sok, “Trends in Labor Force Participation of Married Mothers of Infants,” Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly Labor Review, February 2007 (www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2007/02/art2abs.htm, accessed 08/08/2010). The data on American fertility are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov/nchs/births.htm, accessed 07/18/2010). Data on growing numbers of forty-year-old mothers come from Claudia Goldin, personal communication.

  101-104 The Cheapest Women: Indian men’s preference for women from the same caste is discussed in Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Maitreesh Ghatak, and Jeanne Lafortune, “Marry for What? Caste and Mate Selection
in Modern India,” NBER Working Paper, May 2009. The analysis of dowry payments in India and Bangladesh draws from Francis Bloch and Vijayendra Rao, “Terror as a Bargaining Instrument: A Case-Study of Dowry Violence in Rural India,” American Economic Review, Vol. 92, No. 4, September 2002, pp. 1029-1043; Siwan Anderson, “The Economics of Dowry and Brideprice,” Journal of Economic Perspectives , Vol. 21, No. 4, Fall 2007, pp. 151-174; Vijayendra Rao, “The Rising Price of Husbands: A Hedonic Analysis of Dowry Increases in Rural India,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 101, No. 4, 1993, pp. 666-671; Vijayendra Rao, “The Economics of Dowries in India,” in Kaushik Basu, ed., Oxford Companion to Economics in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Luciana Suran and Sajeda Amin, “Does Dowry Make Life Better for Brides? A Test of the Bequest Theory of Dowry in Rural Bangladesh,” Policy Research Division Working Paper, Population Council, New York, 2004.

  104-106 Killing Girls: The decline in the abortion of female fetuses in South Korea and the impact of ultrasound technology on such abortions in India are discussed in Woojin Chung and Monica Das Gupta, “The Decline of Son Preference in South Korea: The Roles of Development and Public Policy,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 33, No. 4, December 2007, pp. 757-783. Data on gender imbalances in South Korea and China are drawn from Monica Das Gupta, Jiang Zhenghua, Li Bohua, Xie Zhenming, Woojin Chung, and Bae Hwa-Ok, “Why Is Son Preference So Persistent in East and South Asia? A Cross-Country Study of China, India and the Republic of Korea,” Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2, December 2003, pp. 153-187; and “China Faces Growing Sex Imbalance,” BBC News, 01/11/2010 (at news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8451289.stm , accessed 07/18/2010). Data on gender imbalances among Indian, Chinese, and Korean families in the United States are found in Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund, “Son-biased Sex Ratios in the 2000 United States Census,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 105, No. 15, April 15, 2008, pp. 5681-5682.

 

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