Nancy Folbre

Time is NOT money! If anything, it is MORE important than money. The time we have to care for one another, especially for our children and our elderly, is more precious to us than anything else in the world. Yet we have more experience accounting for money than we do for time.In this volume, leading experts in analysis of time use from across the globe explore the interface between time use and family policy. They show how social institutions limit the choices that individuals can make about how to divide their time between paid and unpaid work. They challenge conventional surveys that offer simplistic measures of time spent in childcare or elder care. They summarize empirical evidence concerning trends in time devoted to the care of family members and debate ways of assigning a monetary value to this time.This important book is well researched, well thought through and well written. It will be highly regarded amongst those interested in the sociology and economics of the family, as well as those with a general interest in gender studies.

THE INVISIBLE HEART addresses an often-neglected yet basic problem in our society: balancing economic pursuits with care for others, particularly children, the elderly, and the infirm. THE INVISIBLE HEART reinterprets policy issues such as welfare reform, school finance, and progresive taxation, and confronts the challenges of globalization, outlining strategies for developing an economic system that rewards both individual achievment and care for others.

`Nancy Folbre focuses on questions that most economists never think about: how and why people form overlapping groups that influence and limit what they want, how they may behave, and what they get. She has sharp and plausible things to say about group solidarity and group conflict and how they have affected the workings of economic institutions. Anyone would be a better economist, or just a clearer thinker, after reading this book.'- Robert M. Solow, Professor of Economics, MIT and Nobel Laureate in EconomicsWho Pays for the Kids? is the short version of the longer question: How are the costs of caring for ourselves,, our children, and other dependents are distributed among the members of society? These costs are largely paid by women, both inside and outside the money economy. They also seem to be increasing, due to the expansion of wage employment, the increased importance of education, and improved health technologies. Despite the social programmes of the welfare state, parents with young children, especially mothers on their own, are increasingly susceptible to poverty.How can we explain the distribution of the `costs of caring' between men and women, parents and children, parents and non-parents? Traditional neoclassical economics answers this question by emphasizing personal choice. Traditional Marxian economics answers it by emphasizing class interest. Traditional feminist theory answers it by emphasizing gender interests. Arguing that all these answers are incomplete, this book offers an alternative analysis of individual choices within interlocking structures of constraint based on gender, age, sex, nation, race and class. A comparative history of this interaction in Northwestern Europe, the United States and the Caribbean helps explain differences in political movements, state policies, and social welfare.Written in a fresh and energetic style by a well known feminist economist, Who Pays for the Kids? is an excellent text for upper level courses in women's studies and the social sciences. A wider public will appreciate its relevance to current policy debates over spending, old age insurance and child support enforcement.

"In this groundbreaking new work, Nancy Folbre builds on a critique and reformulation of Marxian political economy, drawing on a larger body of scientific research, including neoclassical economics, sociology, psychology, and evolutionary biology, to answer the defining question of feminist political economy: why is gender inequality so pervasive? In part, because of the contradictory effects of capitalist development: on the one hand, rapid technological change has improved living standards and increased the scope for individual choice for women; on the other, increased inequality and the weakening of families and communities have reconfigured gender inequalities, leaving caregivers particularly vulnerable. The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems examines why care work is generally unrewarded in a market economy, calling attention to the non-market processes of childbearing, childrearing and the care of other dependents, the inheritance of assets, and the use of force and violence to appropriate both physical and human resources. Exploring intersecting inequalities based on class, gender, age, race/ethnicity, and citizenship, and their implications for political coalitions, it sets a new feminist agenda for the twenty-first century."--Provided by publisher.