Family Law

1
Family Law

• Why is marriage?
• Why has marriage become less common, less stable?
• Why have out of wedlock births greatly increased?
• 19th century seduction law
• Should we legalize the baby market?
• The future of marriage and reproduction

2
Why is marriage?

• Family as a unit to exploit division of labor
  makes sense, but
• Why traditionally as a lifetime contract?
• Why do long term contracts exist in general?
• Firm specific sunk costs create a bilateral
  monopoly
• With opportunities for bargaining cost etc.
• So specify the terms in advance
• Marriage as an example
• Relationship specific sunk costs in
• Specializing in being Xs spouse, and
• Shared children
• Permanent contract as one solution.
• Still room for bargaining within marriage
• Partly controlled by traditional roles
• Penalties for breach another, but
• Hard to know who is breaching, since
• Quality of performance hard to observe.
• Al-Tanukhi story.

3
What has changed?

• Divorce more common because such sunk costs
  reduced by
• Lower infant mortality and
• Division of labor taking much household
  production out of the house.
• But divorce on demand raises a new problem of
  opportunistic breach, because
• Women perform early, men late, aka
• Women depreciate faster than men on the marriage
  market
• So if on demand without penalty, men can engage
  in opportunistic breach
• And women respond by adjusting the timing of
  performance
• Later child-bearing
• Less specialization in household production
• Both of which have happened
• Analogous to my house building story in the
  previous chapter.

4
Out of Wedlock Births

• Have increased enormously over past 40 years
• Not only in the U.S.
• And not only among the poor
• Why?
• Welfare? Perhaps.
• But that does not explain the increase among the
  not poor
• Perhaps several simultaneous causes?
• Gender ratio
• More war, less death in childbirth
• Shifts the market against women? But not by very
  much in the U.S.
• Rising income?
• Why put up with a husband
• If you can afford to do without one?
• Akerlof Yellin argumenteffect of birth control
  and abortion.
• Joint product linkimplication. Marriage or
  commitment if
• Breaking the link improves opportunities for
  women who like sex and dont want children, but
• But their competition worsens the opportunity for
  women who want children.
• Men have more opportunity for sex without long
  term commitment

5
Glittering Bonds

• The puzzle Why the custom of engagement rings
• The problem
• How can women have sex before marriage without
• Risking being seduced and abandoned?
• Which badly hurts her value on the marriage
  market
• The legal solution
• The tort action for breach of promise
• Which was gradually abandoned by U.S. courts
• The private solution
• The man gives the woman a valuable ring when they
  get engaged
• Sex after engagement is permitted
• If the man jilts her, the ring forfeits. A
  performance bond
• The custom declined as
• Increasing acceptance of non-marital sex
• And better contraception
• Reduced the risk

6
Byways of seduction law

• 19th c. English and American law
• Adult daughter is seduced and pregnant
• Father sues, as
• Master collecting damages for injury to a servant
• The legal explanation
• Daughter cannot sue, because fornication is
  illegal
• And she participated
• So use the fiction of master servant instead
• My explanation
• Seduction might be a way of evading paternal
  control over who she married
• If she controlled the action, makes tactic work
  better
• If father controls it, makes it work worse

7
Law, sex and markets

• The baby market
• Why is it illegal for adoptive parents to pay the
  mother?
• She can transfer parental rights
• Why cant she sell them?
• Why the strong feeling against it?
• Anyone not share it?
• Can anyone explain it?
• Prostitution
• To prevent competition with marriage?
• Because it commodifies sex?
• More generalized puzzle about attitudes towards
  money
• To varying degrees taboo
• In social interactions.
• Friends might owe me a dinner, but cant pay with
  cash
• We give gift cards when cash would be easier for
  both sides

8
Are babies a good thing?

• Over population argument, econ version
• Children produce negative externalities
• So people have too many of them
• So we need to limit population increase
• What are the negative externalities?
• Use scarce land, resources?
• As long as those are private property
• Consuming them is a cost, but not an external
  cost
• Pollute, commit crime, go on welfare,
• But there are also positive externalities
• Make new discoveries from which others benefit
• Pay taxes--perhaps to pay for welfare
• To make the argument, you need to somehow
  estimate all of these well enough to sign the sum