Examines three decades of data on the relationship between women¿s labor market activity and the income mobility of families that lose a spouse through death, divorce, or separation. Wives¿ labor market activity acts as partial insurance for women and their families against the negative economic consequences of marital dissolution. However, while women who lose their husbands increase their earnings significantly, the number of upwardly mobile families is quite small, and a majority of families actually move down. In addition, they do less well in successive decades. These findings imply that U.S. social and economic policies currently leave considerable gaps in ¿insurance¿ for families in the event of marital dissolution. Tables and graphs.

“Ambitious, fast-paced, fact-filled, and accessible.” —Science “A compelling case for why achieving the right balance of time with our families...is vital to the economic success and prosperity of our nation... A must read.” —Maria Shriver From backyard barbecues to the blogosphere, working men and women across the country are raising the same worried question: How can I get ahead at my job while making sure my family doesn’t suffer? A visionary economist who has looked at the numbers behind the personal stories, Heather Boushey argues that resolving the work–life conflict is as vital for us personally as it is essential economically. Finding Time offers ingenious ways to help us carve out the time we need, while showing businesses that more flexible policies can actually make them more productive. “Supply and demand curves are suddenly ‘sexy’ when Boushey uses them to prove that paid sick days, paid family leave, flexible work schedules, and affordable child care aren’t just cutesy women’s issues for families to figure out ‘on their own time and dime,’ but economic issues affecting the country at large.” —Vogue “Boushey argues that better family-leave policies should not only improve the lives of struggling families but also boost workers’ productivity and reduce firms’ costs.” —The Economist

Labour markets in North America and Europe have changed tremendously in the face of increased globalisation and technical progress, raising important challenges for policy makers concerned with equality of opportunity. This book examines the influence of both changes in income inequality and of social policies on the degree to which economic advantage is passed on between parents and children in the rich countries. Standard theoretical models of generational dynamics are extended to examine generational income and earnings mobility over time and across space. Over twenty contributors from North America and Europe offer comparable estimates of the degree of mobility, changes in mobility, and the impact of government policy. In so doing, they strengthen the analytical tool kit used in the study of generational mobility, and offer insights for research and directions in dealing with equality of opportunity and child poverty.

Work and the Family: A Study in Social Demography reports on the investigation of a variety of economic squeezes hypothesized to be characteristic of postwar American society. One is the lower white-collar squeeze where the attainment of white-collar lifestyle aspirations may be impeded by an income equivalent to that of many manual workers. The others are the two life-cycle squeezes: the squeeze of early adulthood when the desire to set up a household is hampered by the relatively low earnings of young men; and the squeeze of middle adulthood when the cost of children is peaking but increases in the earnings of husbands may be slowing down with regard to those squeezes. The book is organized into four parts. Part I introduces the theoretical model to be used and the major objectives of the research. It also discusses important conceptual and methodological problems involved in life-cycle analysis and the use of occupation as a major analytical tool. Part II examines life-cycle squeezes—structured sources of economic stress arising out of the interaction of family and career cycles. Part III examines the nature of wives' socioeconomic contribution to the family. Part IV essentially sums up the theoretical implications of the analyses conducted in the preceding chapters and represents a more formal theoretical statement of the issues in terms of adaptive family strategies. This study is aimed at the wide audience of demographers, sociologists, economists, and historians who are interested in family socio economic and demographic behavior. It is also intended to appeal to readers at all levels of methodological sophistication—whether professionals or graduate students.

Why some people are rich and others poor can be explained in a number of ways. Income and Wealth focuses on who gets what and why. It explains the dynamics of income generation, how it is measured, and how such dramatic disparities in distribution come about. The book first defines various characteristics of income, with an emphasis on the gap between the rich and the poor, and reviews several theories to explain the disparities. Subsequent chapters discuss such timely topics as the vanishing middle class and the sky-high salaries of CEOs, Hollywood stars, and athletes. The final chapters consider the implications of policies, such as the minimum wage, taxes, immigration, and trade quotas, and expand the discussion to consider international comparisons. Featuring graphs and charts, a glossary of key terms, and a listing of references and resources, Income and Wealth explains the intricate, and often controversial, effects of economic policies on individuals, families, and communities. Moreover, it shows how the numbers can be manipulated by policymakers, pundits, journalists, and academics to promote various agendas—and shows readers how to recognize hyberbole and make better-informed decisions.

In the controversial public debate over modern American families, the vast changes in family life--the rise of single, two-paycheck, and same-sex parents--have often been blamed for declining morality and unhappy children. Drawing upon pioneering research with the children of the gender revolution, Kathleen Gerson reveals that it is not a lack of "family values," but rigid social and economic forces that make it difficult to have a vibrant and committed family and work life. Despite the entrance of women into the workforce and the blurring of once clearly defined gender boundaries, men and women live in a world where the demands of balancing parenting and work, autonomy and commitment, time and money are left largely unresolved. Gerson finds that while an overwhelming majority of young men and women see an egalitarian balance within committed relationships as the ideal, today's social and economic realities remain based on conventional--and now obsolete--distinctions between breadwinning and caretaking. In this equity vacuum, men and women develop conflicting strategies, with women stressing self-reliance and men seeking a new traditionalism. With compassion for all perspectives, Gerson argues that whether one decides to give in to traditionally imbalanced relationships or to avoid marriage altogether, these approaches are second-best responses, not personal preferences or inherent attributes, and they will shift if new options can be created to help people achieve their egalitarian aspirations. The Unfinished Revolution offers clear recommendations for the kinds of workplace and community changes that would best bring about a more egalitarian family life--a new flexibility at work and at home that benefits families, encourages a thriving economy, and helps women and men integrate love and work. Praise for the Hardcover: "Over the past three decades, social change has blown apart the old-fashioned ideal of the nuclear family--and Gerson has set out to map where the pieces have landed." --New York Post "Valuable for the abundance and candor of the testimony from this unmoored generation pioneering through radically altered conceptions of personal and professional life." --Publishers Weekly "This is not a battle that can be won with legal challenges or legislation. Yes, it would undoubtedly be greatly aided by the passage of major social policies such as universal child care. But at its core, this is a fight that plays out within homes and between partners. And as Gerson's research makes clear, the fight has not changed all that dramatically in the past 30 years." --The American Prospect

This volume challenges the view that unemployment is exclusively determined by structural characteristics of the labour market and the social benefit system. Macroeconomic policies and investment in capital stock are included in the analysis and are shown to have a major role to play.