Valuing Children or Family Business

Valuing Children: Rethinking the Economics of the Family

Author: Nancy Folbr

Nancy Folbre challenges the conventional economist's assumption that parents have children for the same reason that they acquire pets—primarily for the pleasure of their company. Children become the workers and taxpayers of the next generation, and "investments" in them offer a significant payback to other participants in the economy.

Yet parents, especially mothers, pay most of the costs. The high price of childrearing pushes many families into poverty, often with adverse consequences for children themselves.

Parents spend time as well as money on children. Yet most estimates of the "cost" of children ignore the value of this time. Folbre provides a startlingly high but entirely credible estimate of the value of parental time per child by asking what it would cost to purchase a comparable substitute for it.

She also emphasizes the need for better accounting of public expenditure on children over the life cycle and describes the need to rethink the very structure and logic of the welfare state. A new institutional structure could promote more cooperative, sustainable, and efficient commitments to the next generation.

Interesting textbook: Small Groups as Complex Systems or Handbook of Training Evaluation and Measurement Methods

Family Business

Author: Ernesto J Poza

FAMILY BUSINESS provides the next generation of family business owners with the knowledge and skills needed for the successful management and leadership of the family enterprise. The author, Ernesto Poza, uses both text and cases to explore a diverse set of family firms, examining the interrelationships between the owners, the family, and the management team. FAMILY BUSINESS, at its core, is a practical book that presents management and family practices to model success as well as an honest look at the advantages and challenges facing family enterprises. With an emphasis on leadership and positioning for the future, FAMILY BUSINESS illustrates how the family enterprise can achieve sustained growth and continuity through generations.