From Family Household Economics to the Economic Theory of the Modern Family: Sesquicentennial Shifts in Ontology and Epistemology

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the evolution of institutions of the household and the family, as well as their perception in economics from the nineteenth century to the present day. Modern academic literature largely preserves the notion of an undivided unity of family and household, which is inherited from the 19th century neoclassical economic thought and reflects the socio-economic realities that existed a century and a half ago. However, following the active emancipation of individuals from the traditional family in the West in the first half of the 20th century, the process of gradual disappearance of family households as one of the three major (along with the firm and the state) economic actors began. In modern western countries, the decision makers in the markets of labour, capital and consumer goods are no longer families, but independent individuals. Families do not disappear, but in western countries they are transformed into a kind of partner firms, whose members freely choose/change partners according to changing personal needs. This qualitative change in the nature of family unions was reflected in the 1980s in “the economic theory of the family” based on the approaches of Gary Becker and Robert A. Pollak, where the behaviour of sexual / marital partners is consistently likened to market behaviour. These trends of changing ontology and epistemology of the family as an economic entity are very important for understanding the capabilities and limitations of traditional family support policies manifested in modern Russia.