Repack the Household: A Response to Robert Ellickson’s Unpacking the Household

Grossbard, Shoshana (2007): Repack the Household: A Response to Robert Ellickson’s Unpacking the Household.

Abstract

I challenge the notion that households can be reduced to housing units. Ellickson, a law professor, overemphasized the desirability of ownership from the perspective of capital accumulation. Ownership is also important to the household members who do the work that maintains the household, including production of meals, homemaking, childcare, eldercare, and other essential functions of households. Discouraging home ownership by those who manage the details of such essential activities, and who need more rather than fewer incentives to engage in household production, is placing more nails in the coffin of advanced industrialized societies.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: household, housing, worker, capital, ownership
• Subjects: J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J12 - Marriage ; Marital Dissolution ; Family Structure ; Domestic Abuse; K - Law and Economics > K1 - Basic Areas of Law > K11 - Property Law; K - Law and Economics > K3 - Other Substantive Areas of Law > K36 - Family and Personal Law; R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R2 - Household Analysis > R21 - Housing Demand

References

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