Family Relationships, Economics Of

The application of microeconomics to the study of the family is recent; only in the last thirty years has it been done systematically. This does not mean that there were no previous studies on certain aspects of family life from an economic point of view. In addition to the well-known work by Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) on population theory, there were some interesting studies in the nineteenth century on inheritance or the structure of family property. However, these works did not place the institution of the family at the center of the economic analysis. This is precisely what present economic theory is doing in that it considers the institution of the family in close relation to economic issues such as the structure of consumption or the ...