The Reluctant Economist: Perspectives on Economics, Economic History, and Demography

by Richard A. Easterlin

• ISBN13: 9780521829748
• ISBN10: 0521829747
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-04-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Where is rapid economic growth taking us? Why has its spread throughout the world been so limited? What are the causes of the great twentieth century advance in life expectancy? Of the revolution in childbearing that is bringing fertility worldwide to near replacement levels? Have free markets been the source of human improvement? Economics provides a start on these questions, but only a start, argues economist Richard A. Easterlin. To answer them calls for merging economics with concepts and data from other social sciences, and with quantitative and qualitative history. Easterlin demonstrates this approach in seeking answers to these and other questions about world or American experience in the last two centuries, drawing on economics, demography, sociology, history, and psychology. The opening chapter gives an autobiographical account of the evolution of this approach, and why Easterlin is a 'reluctant economist'.

Table of Contents

Part I. Economics: 1. The reluctant economist

2. Economics and subjective testimony

3. Is economic growth creating a new postmaterialistic society?

Part II. Economic History: 4. Why isn't the whole world developed?

5. Kuznets cycles and modern economic growth

6. Industrial revolution and mortality revolution: two of a kind?

7. How beneficent is the market? A look at the modern history of mortality

Part III. Demography: 8. An economic framework for fertility analysis

9. New perspectives on the demographic transition

10. Does human ferility adjust to the environment? Population change and farm settlement in the northern United States

11. America's baby boom and baby bust, 1940-1980: causes and consequences

12. Preferences and prices in choice of career: the switch to business.