February 22, 2005

Broken Windows

Posted by Scott at 03:04 PM

I had mentioned that back in October I read Thomas Sowell's Applied Economics. It's subtitled "Thinking Beyond Stage One". When all is said and done, one comes away with a renewed interest in economics as if one was studying any other field of science. Economic principals are everywhere, like laws of physics, governing behavior all around us. Many times a well intentioned policy or law can have very negative repercussions. These secondary effects are rarely investigated up front, often due to political pressure to do what sounds most expedient or caring. As an engineer I often have to deal with design tradeoffs, so the ideal of the real world tradeoffs brought about because of economic realities intrigues me.

One of the things Sowell mentions a few times is a concept called the "broken windows fallacy". It refers to the false idea that if someone's window gets broken, it stimulates the local economy by bringing about revenue for the glass manufacturer, the installer, etc. Some people scale that concept up and apply it to disasters on a much larger scale, such as a surge in the construction industry following a hurricane. It doesn't look at the overall picture but only the immediate visible benefits.

One of the things I've thought about since moving was the impact on society as more and more mothers moved into the workforce. In the short term it certainly can help bring more money into the family. I had hypothesized that to some extent, perhaps having so many dual income families might be one of the root causes of high home prices, at least in areas that are more land locked. If a finite number of homes are available in a desirable area, yes, prices will go up to meet what the market will bear. However, if more couples are both working outside of the home, those couples tend to be able to trump the home bids of single income families. Prices float up even higher as a result. The bidding war gets intensified. It gets to the point where families almost have to have both spouses working to be able to afford a nice home.

Again, this is all my own ruminations on the subject. I have no studies to back it up. I just know that home prices have more than doubled in the past 10 years I've lived here. In our little neighborhood there are certainly a number of families where both spouses have to work in order to afford the mortgages of these homes. Anecdotal evidence, certainly. But something tells me that if most women were at home more households had one spouse at home, these home prices would have to come down, just as they do when the interest rates go up. Housing prices, in aggregate, follow what the market can reasonably bear.

I say this not because of any particular feelings towards mothers staying at home or juggling an outside job. Just observing and contemplating, meditating on the tradeoffs.

One of the weblogs I read daily is Jimmy Akin's weblog. He is also a fan of Thomas Sowell and his teachings on economics. He also has been thinking through the economic consequences of large percentages of women in the workplace. He writes about it here along with 32 potential economic consequences. If you start to read it, stay with it until the end. Like me he isn't trying to suggest women stay at home, but rather he says:

What it does do is point out that the idea that by having two-income households be the norm does not automatically benefit the economy. There are economic and other costs (the broken windows) associated with having a society with nuclear families where both parents work outside the home. How many of those costs a society should be willing to bear and thus what degree of two-income families there should be is an entirely separate question.

What it also does is point out that raising and educating children in the home is itself work! It is work that makes a valuable contribution to society and, if someone is not available in the home to do it then it has to be handled another way. That means that the advent of the two-income household is not simply an economic gain to the family or to the economy as a whole. It also has significant costs that have to be weighed in determining whether or not it should be pursued.

That calculus, of what benefits one is willing to pursue and at what costs, is what economics is all about.
Comments

"But something tells me that if most women were at home, these home prices would have to come down, just as they do when the interest rates go up."
Let's change that "most women" to "one spouse", not assuming it would be the woman who should/would be at home! I also think there are way more reasons why house prices have gone up, and that there are many positive contributions and results of both spouses working outside the home too.
I have to say, you think about things alot more seriously than I do!
What else is new? Nothing here- school board mtg tonite to finalize tuition prices for next year- now that's an interesting budget to look at!
Alyssa

Posted by: alyssa at February 22, 2005 04:21 PM

Agreed. It should read "one spouse". I wrote last night before going to bed so my thinking gets a bit cloudy. (It didn't get posted until this afternoon due to problems at the site's host.)

Please understand that I was not trying _at all_ to indicate that both spouses working as THE reason prices are high. I was saying that they push prices higher. Certainly supply and demand are the major causes. In landlocked highly desired areas like Nashua, the prices are insane for what you get. When we went around the greater area looking for homes, I knew we were getting our bids beaten by dual income yuppies. You know that I earn a healthy amount, but I can't compete against *two* people working in high tech or executive positions. But then you go into these neighborhoods and often find both spouses working because they _have_ to in order to afford the mortgage.

Did you take any time to read Jimmy Akin's analysis and the comments he got? Again, he is not trying to implicate that nothing good comes of this, but rather that there are certain tradeoffs which rarely go examined in depth.

Posted by: Scott at February 22, 2005 04:37 PM

This sort of reminds me of the recent book "The Two Income Trap". I am also remembering a La Leche League book "The Heart has its reasons" about the economic as well as the emotional costs in having two parents working outside the home.
I have worked or gone to school throughout our marriage and childrearing but we did a lot of that as tag team parenting. For example, I worked 10 years as an RN on the night shift - never full time though, usually 24 hrs/wk in 2 or 3 shifts. One advantage was that it forced my husband to come home from his work at a decent hour to have dinner with the family and then to be there for the kids while I was at work. The one year when I neither worked outside the home nor went to school, he was at work 72-84 hours a week - on a salary (ie no overtime). He's an engineer who loves what he does and who gets into a zone while working and doesn't even realize that he is there. My needing him home for the kids so that I could go to work or school pulled hom home in a way that my wanting him home for dinner and recreation didn't.
Raising kids is hard work. It is also pricey. It is the best work in the world but it really does need two parents. The economic and social trend that disturbs me more than the two income household is the single parent minimum wage income household. Talk about major stress!

Posted by: alicia at February 23, 2005 09:47 PM

I guess my main concern is that as it became the norm for mothers to work outside of the home, it changed the economics of things such that it became harder for families *not* to have a mother employed. The mortgage tends to be the biggest monthly expense in a family and I think it was impacted. Higher mortgages encourage more moms to work, and the cycle continues. I think it also tended to encourage families to have fewer children so that the mother could get back to work sooner and keep child care costs down.

None of this is to imply that women shouldn't work outside the home or that they are in any way incapable. I'm just trying to examine the side effects that rarely get discussed. As always, there are *several* factors simultaneously at play in any economic scenario.

Posted by: Scott at February 24, 2005 06:54 AM