New Home Economics

New Home Economics is an approach to the study of consumption, labor supply, and other family decisions that centers on the household rather than the individual and emphasizes the importance of household production.

Together, Gary Becker and Jacob Mincer founded the NHE in the 1960s at the labor workshop at Columbia University that they both directed. Shoshana Grossbard, who entered the NHE while a student of Becker at the University of Chicago, first published a history of the NHE at Columbia and Chicago in 2001. After receiving feedback from the NHE founders she revised her account.

Among the first NHE publications were Becker (1960) on fertility, Mincer (1962) on women’s labor supply, and Becker (1965) on the allocation of time. Students and faculty who attended the Becker/Mincer workshop at Columbia in the 1960s and have published in the NHE tradition include Andrea Beller, Barry Chiswick, Carmel Chiswick, Victor Fuchs, Michael Grossman (a specialist on the demand for health care), Robert Michael, June O'Neill, Sol Polachek, and Robert Willis. James Heckman was also influenced by the NHE tradition and attended the labor workshop at Columbia from 1969 until his move to the University of Chicago. The NHE may be seen as a subfield of family economics.

In 2013, responsding to a lack of women in top positions in the United States, Becker told Wall Street Journal reporter David Wessel, "A lot of barriers [to women and blacks] have been broken down. That's all for the good. It's much less clear what we see today is the result of such artificial barriers. Going home to take care of the kids when the man doesn't: Is that a waste of a woman's time? There's no evidence that it is." This view was criticized by Charles Jones, stating that, "Productivity could be 9% to 15% higher, potentially, if all barriers were eliminated."

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