This paper explores the value of purchasing joint life annuities for married couples. It describes the existing market for joint life annuities, and summarizes the range of annuity products that are currently available to couples. It then considers the value that married couples would place on...

This paper examines an empirical regularity found in many societies: that family influences on the probability of transiting from one grade level to the next diminish at higher levels of education. We examine the statistical model used to establish the empirical regularity and the intuitive...

Empirical work on intergenerational transfers has focused on distinguishing between altruistic and exchange motivated behavior. However, these two models are unable to explain the strong tendency for estates to be divided equally across children, while inter vivos transfers are made unequally....

In this paper we develop and estimate a factor model of the earnings, labor supply, and wages of young men and young women, their parents and their siblings. We estimate the model using data on matched sibling and parent-child pairs from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market...

Income tax burdens on family units are adjusted to reflect differences in ability to pay attributable to whether the unit consists of a single individual or a married couple and how many dependents are present. Substantial controversy exists over the appropriate forms of adjustment, and existing...

This paper analyzes the intertemporal efficiency and optimality of steady states within overlapping-generations models in which the utility of individual working couples , depends on the consumption of their parents and children as well as their own consumption. The analysis considers both a...

Between-family differences in expenditures and output reflect the effect of simultaneous increases in children's ability on the willingness of parents to transfer resources to them. Within-family differences also reflect the attitudes of parents toward disparity among children. In this paper we...

This paper examines the appropriate tax treatment of the family in a series of analytical models and numerical examples. For a population of taxpaying couples which differ in earning capacity, we derive the optimal tax rates for each potential earner. These rates depend crucially upon own and...

A new empirical study of the relation between money, nominal income, prices, and real output in postwar quarterly U.S. data rejects virtually all of the conclusions reached by Families provide individuals with risk sharing opportunities which may not otherwise be available. Within the family...

The household production model provides a useful theoretical framework in which one may analyze family labor supply issues. In this model, the family is viewed as if it were a small firm producing its ultimate wants within the household. In order to satisfy these wants, the family (firm)...