Family Economy

Examples of Family Economy in the following topics:

• The Family Economy: Women and Children

  • The early stages of development in many economies is characterized by family-based production.
  • The term "family economy" can be used to describe the family as an economic unit.
  • The family economic unit is dependent on the specialized labor of family members.
  • The family economy supplied agricultural products, manufactured goods, and provided services.
  • Industrialization further contributed to the demise of the family economy where the capitalist market encouraged production in large-scale factories, farms, and mines.

• The Importance of Paid and Unpaid Work

  • Although we usually think of work as paid, unpaid work is equally important to the economy.
  • Examples of unpaid workers include members of a family or cooperative; conscripts or forced labor; volunteer workers who work for charity or amusement; students who take intern positions as work experience; or conventional workers who are not paid because their enterprise is short of money.
  • These may be members of a family or cooperative; conscripts or forced labor; volunteer workers who work for charity or amusement; students who take intern positions as work experience; or conventional workers who are not paid because their enterprise is short of money.
  • Another important type of unpaid work is work done by family members to maintain a household.
  • Though unpaid, this domestic work is crucial to the economy: it keeps workers alive and healthy and helps raise new generations of workers to keep the paid economy running.

• The State of the Economy

  • Despite recent economic woes, America's economy remains the world's largest and most diverse.
  • It opened its doors wider to foreign products and investment than any other major economy. "" America's entrepreneurial culture was the world's model.
  • When the housing boom finally collapsed in 2007, it exposed a fragile layer of high-risk home loans made over a decade to families that could not afford them, particularly if the economy weakened.
  • Stock markets plunged, and the world's economies headed into the worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
  • Assess the connection between the increased presence of globalization and debt and the current state of the U.S. economy

• Hunger, Malnutrition, and Family

  • Those with weak support structures are more vulnerable to hunger and starvation than those with strong family networks.
  • At the other end of the spectrum, transnational organizations like the World Bank claim to be part of the solution to hunger, maintaining that the best way for countries to succeed in breaking the cycle of poverty and hunger is to build export-led economies that will give them the financial means to buy foodstuffs on the world market.
  • The family plays an important role in understanding patterns of hunger.
  • Those who have a weak or non-existent family support structure are more likely than those with strong family networks to go hungry.
  • Children and seniors are the most vulnerable to going hungry for lack of familial support.

• Poverty and Inequality

  • This amount may fluctuate depending on the cost of living and the location of the family.
  • Families headed by single mothers are particularly susceptible to poverty.
  • Still others point out that people at the poverty level sometimes receive cash income from casual work and in the "underground" sector of the economy, which is never recorded in official statistics.
  • Despite the generally prosperous American economy as a whole, concerns about inequality continued during the 1980s and 1990s.
  • Meanwhile, wealthier families reaped most of the gains from the booming stock market.

• A Growing Society

  • Several factors contributed to the growth of the New England economy during the eighteenth century.
  • New England's economy grew steadily over the entire colonial era despite the lack of a staple crop that could be exported.
  • The rapidly growing population led to shortages of good farm land on which young families could establish themselves; one result was to delay marriage, and another was to move to new lands farther west.
  • Combined with a growing urban market for farm products, these factors allowed the economy to flourish despite the lack of technological innovation.

• The Plantation Economy and the Planter Class

  • Plantation economies rely on the export of cash crops as a source of income.
  • Scale economies are also achieved by long distances to markets and reduction in the crop's size.
  • Over the years, tobacco became important to Virginia's economy, even acting as currency at times.
  • Antebellum architecture is seen in many plantations, especially in the "plantation house," the stately residences of planters and their families.
  • The largest and wealthiest planter families, for instance, those with estates fronting on the James River in Virginia, constructed mansions in brick and Georgian style, e.g.

• The Dynamics of Poverty

  • In economics, the cycle of poverty has been defined as a phenomenon where poor families become trapped in poverty for at least three generations.
  • These families have either limited or nonexistent social and economic resources.
  • Sociologists have argued that the economic restructuring of the U.S. and other developed nations from manufacturing to service-based economies has led to chronic joblessness in inner cities.
  • In a service economy, there is a higher proportion of high-skill jobs than in a manufacturing economy.
  • Thus, people who have lost their manufacturing positions are unqualified for the jobs available in the new economy.

• Clinton's Promise of Change

  • Bill Clinton epitomized the New Democrat ideology with his focus on improving the economy and economic deregulation.
  • The New Democrats were focused heavily on improving the economy, and during Clinton's presidency, they were responsible for passing the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993.
  • This Act raised taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of taxpayers while cutting taxes on 15 million low-income families.

• Assessing the Great Society

  • Historians and economists try to assess the effects on poverty rates and the economy, with many competing analyses put forward.
  • Others argue that the policies had negative effects on the economy and led to more poverty in the long-term.
  • For exmaple, the 2011 poverty line was a yearly income of $22,350 for a family of four.
  • Some economists, including Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, have argued that Johnson's policies actually had a negative impact on the economy because of their interventionist nature.
  • Observers debate the impact of the Great Society and War on Poverty on poverty rates and the economy.