Soc (2010) 47:234–239
DOI 10.1007/s12115-010-9316-4
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY
An Economist’s View of Marriage
Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill
Published online: 31 March 2010
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract This article considers recent developments in the
economic analysis of families. The usual economic analysis
of families has considered families as household firms that
produce goods and services. Recently this model of the
household firm been challenged by an economic analysis of
families that focuses on shared consumption in households
rather than shared production. These challenges rest on the
assumption that the basic economic problem for families is
now coordination of taste and consumption rather than
provision under conditions of scarcity. The article considers
these challenges to the usual economic analysis of families
and concludes that, in spite of the many changes to family
structures in recent decades, the model of the household
firm is still the most valid model of the family, especially
for families with children.
Keywords Marriage . Family . Children . Household firm .
Consumption complementarities .
Production complementarities
Economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers make the
case that the economics of marriage and family life have
changed radically in the last half-century. Both are faculty
at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School; Wolfers
blogs on the New York Times’ Freakonomics blog. Stevenson
and Wolfers ask what economic forces shape how family
members decide to spend their time and effort. Economists’
usual answer is that these decisions are shaped by the need to
provide for the family, including by earning income, tending
J. P. Merrill (*)
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e-mail: jacqueline.merrill@comcast.net
children, and keeping house. Stevenson and Wolfers argue
that while this may have been true until the last decades,
families are now organized around enjoyment of each others’
company and shared activities. In other terms, Stevenson and
Wolfers argue that the basic economic problem faced by
families is no longer scarcity but coordination of taste and
consumption. They present this as dry economic analysis
free from normative claims, but they are offering interpreta-
tions of behavior grounded on normative assumptions and
draw conclusions are certainly not value-free. Their argu-
ments are questionable both because it is not clear that the
economics of families has changed as greatly as they claim,
and because of the unsettling implications of their arguments
for families, and especially for the care of children.
First, some background to the arguments of Stevenson
and Wolfers. Study of the family from the perspective of
economics began with University of Chicago Nobel
Laureate economist Gary Becker’s path-breaking work
(Becker 1981 [1991]). Becker analyzed not only what one
might think of as “economic” decisions such as household
consumption patterns but decisions about whom and when
to marry, whether or not to have children, to divorce, and
how to divide household tasks. He modeled the household
as a firm that produces a mix of market goods, such as
skills sold to an employer and products sold in the
marketplace, and household goods, such as childcare,
prepared meals, and housework. He assumed that heads of
households, whether husband and wife or single persons,
seek to maximize the welfare of their household given the
constraints of their talents and resources. This “constrained
maximization” economic model of the household firm
powerfully explained family choices. Becker argued, for
example, that even when a wife is equally capable as her
husband at producing market goods and her comparative
advantage in caring for their children is small, it is
Soc (2010) 47:234–239
economically rational—it lets the household enjoy the
greatest sum of household and market goods—for a wife
to specialize in homemaking while her husband is bread-
winner. On Becker’s account, these “production complemen-
tarities” explained the traditional division of labor of wives as
homemakers and husbands as breadwinners. Becker’s success
at modeling family decisions helped to draw other economists
to the study of family life, and also found application in
disciplines as diverse as sociobiology and the law.
Becker’s work drew criticism from many quarters.
Feminist economists such as Barbara Bergmann rejected
Becker’s application of classical economics to the house-
hold on the grounds that not economic rationality but power
relationships determine the division of labor in the
household. For Bergmann, the defining activity of the
household is not production of market and household goods
but “controlling and sustaining reproduction,” an activity
that requires strong control over the household’s female
members (Bergmann 1995). Thus women shoulder the
greater share of housework not because of economic
rationality but because of men’s power over women. Other
scholars accepted Becker’s model of the family as a
household firm and the application of classical economic
assumptions to analysis of the family but have revised
Becker’s assumptions about how production occurs within
the household (see for example Pollack 2003).
In their writings, Stevenson and Wolfers describe
contemporary marriages as “hedonic” partnerships to share
the fun of activities from movie-going to childrearing. (Of
course, being economists, Stevenson and Wolfers do not
call this shared fun, they call it “consumption complemen-
tarities.”) Stevenson and Wolfers reverse Becker’s analysis
by claiming that the point of families is not to produce
goods but to consume them. They write, “…what drives
modern marriage? We believe that the answer lies in a shift
from the family as a forum for shared production, to shared
consumption. In case the language of economics lacks
romance, let’s be clearer: modern marriage is about love
and companionship. Most things in life are simply better
shared with another person: this ranges from the simple
pleasures such as enjoying a movie or a hobby together, to
shared social ties such as attending the same church, and
finally, to the joint project of bringing up children.
Returning to the language of economics, the key today is
consumption complementarities—activities that are not
only enjoyable, but are more enjoyable when shared with
a spouse. We call this new model of sharing our lives
‘hedonic marriage’” (2008a).
By these claims, Stevenson and Wolfers stake out new
critique of Becker. Becker and his erstwhile critics all
shared a common assumption that the family’s fundamental
character is to be productive–and especially that it produces
and rears children. Even Bergmann, who rejects Becker’s
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work as “preposterous,” accepts this assumption. Stevenson
and Wolfers clearly announce that they mean to bring new
fundamental assumptions to analysis of the family. In their
view “the character of marriage has changed” and women’s
role in the household has “taken on a different meaning”
than it had in earlier decades (Isen and Stevenson 2008,
Stevenson and Wolfers 2007). Thus, Stevenson and Wolfers
keep the assumptions of classical economics and maximiz-
ing behavior but emphatically reject the household firm
model and the assumption that the household is fundamen-
tally concerned with production and reproduction. Most
especially, as indicated in the quote above, Stevenson and
Wolfers classify “the joint project of bringing up children”
as consumption, not production—thus fundamentally chal-
lenging how economists, and most of the rest of us, have
understood this central activity of the family.
Stevenson and Wolfers’ arguments bolster the argument
that marriage is merely a contractual arrangement like
others, not worthy of special status in the law. After all, if
family life aims at consumption, why should marriage and
family be viewed differently than other contractual partner-
ships? And, in fact, Stevenson and Wolfers recommend
changes to family and divorce law that would erode the
traditional marriage contract (Stevenson and Wolfers 2006,
2008a, b, c). Yet, before we accept their conclusions, it is
worth taking a look at how they come to the conclusion that
the basic ground of family life has changed from production
and reproduction to consumption. A closer look shows that
key steps in their arguments are not clearly justified, and
that they make judgments about preferences and motives
that do not fit the behavior of families today. In the next
pages I review their arguments, and sketch an alternative
account that assumes that production is still at the core of
family life.
Stevenson and Wolfers’ Hedonic Marriage
To explain what they mean by hedonic marriage, Stevenson
and Wolfers begin by offering a straightforward economic
story about how changes in incentives lead to changes in
behavior (Isen and Stevenson 2008; Stevenson and Wolfers
2007). They point to technological innovations, the market-
ing of household services, and legal changes that all decrease
women’s incentives to pursue homemaking rather than
education and careers. New technologies such as dishwashers
and prepared foods allow for easier homemaking. Even more
important as a new technology, the birth control pill puts
reliable birth control under the unilateral control of women,
and the security from unplanned pregnancy encourages
women to spend more years in school and at work. The wide
availability of housecleaning, laundry services, and paid
childcare allows women to substitute paid work for home-
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making. Legal rulings outlawing sex-based wage and em-
ployment discrimination increased the value of women’s
participation in the workforce, while other legal rulings
guaranteeing access to birth control and abortion also
encourage women to focus on education and careers.
Meanwhile, changes in divorce law discourage women from
specializing in homemaking.
As Stevenson and Wolfers explain, these changes in
women’s incentives to pursue education and careers and to
avoid the role of full-time homemaker led very naturally to
changes in women’s behavior. In recent decades, women
have become more highly educated on average and their
median age at first marriage has increased. They note that
women, especially college-educated women, are more likely
to delay having children. Wives with children are much
more likely than in the past to remain in the workforce and,
in particular, in full-time positions. Thus far Stevenson and
Wolfers’ story is a familiar one about how changing
incentives alter behavior, and focuses exclusively on
women.
From this Stevenson and Wolfers draw their conclusion
that that the character of marriage has changed in the last
half century. This argument considers the motives and
preferences about marriage of men as well as women.
Stevenson and Wolfers note that college-educated women
are now nearly as likely to marry as non-college educated
women, and that the educational attainment of married
partners is more similar than in the past. The interpretation
that they give to these data is that Becker’s account of
marriage and the sexual division of labor is no longer a
plausible account of marriage, at least if the wife is a
college-educated woman able to earn a good income in the
marketplace. They argue that since college-educated women
are able to produce more for their families by spending
most of their time in paid work rather than in
homemaking, they cannot be motivated to marry in
order to benefit from specializing in housework while
their husbands are breadwinners. Therefore, at least
college-educated women must have a different motive
for entering marriage than production complementarities.
Meanwhile, college educated men are choosing to marry
women whose education and career ambitions make
them unlikely to choose the role of full-time homemaker,
supposedly demonstrating that these men are no longer
seeking production complementarities in a mate. Since
Stevenson and Wolfers have ruled out production comple-
mentarities as a plausible motive for marriage, they assert that
correct alternative interpretation must be that these women
and men must be getting married for consumption comple-
mentarities. In some of their work, they join this preference for
consumption complementarities to a preference for egalitarian
as opposed to traditional marriages and for insurance against
the loss of income by one spouse (2007).
Soc (2010) 47:234–239
These last steps in their argument lead to the conclusions
that the character of marriage has changed and that
specialization in homemaking by women has taken on a
different meaning than it had in the past. These conclusions
are on much less certain ground than their straightforward
account about the changing incentives and behavior of
women. Economists are typically loath to raise questions
about the character and meaning of institutions such as
marriage and the sexual division of labor. However,
Stevenson and Wolfers do so and their arguments require
some explanation of what they intend to convey by these
terms. They seem to suggest that the psychic experience of
marriage has changed and that women’s and men’s
preferences, not merely their incentives and behavior, have
changed.
However, they nowhere offer an account of such
changes. In fact, Stevenson and Wolfers are silent on the
question of whether the changes in incentives and behavior
on the part of women were accompanied by changes in
preferences on the part of men and women, although they
seem to imply that this is the case. Do they suppose women
have long desired changes in the prevalent model of
marriage, and did women’s improved access to careers
and market power finally allow them to drive a new bargain
with potential marriage partners? Did both men and women
throughout the twentieth century desire egalitarian marriages
driven by consumption complementarities, while only in
the last decades have young men and women been able
realize such marriages because of technological, market,
and legal changes? Or has there been a change in men
and women’s preferences from preferences for traditional
roles to contemporary egalitarian roles, as Stevenson and
Wolfers seem to imply?
Moreover, it was certainly true a half-century ago that
“most things in life are simply better shared with another
person” and that family members enjoyed movies, hobbies,
church attendance, and “the joint project of raising
children” together. Yet, Stevenson and Wolfers would have
us believe that these shared experiences are at the heart of
marriage today in a way they were not several decades ago.
Shared enjoyment of common activities is certainly an
important part of marriage and family life, but this has been
true since love matches replaced arranged marriages, at
least through much of the West. Thus, if production
complementarities have become less important as an
account of marriage, it is within a timeframe of the last
few centuries, not the last fifty years, as Stevenson and
Wolfers would have it. Further, while Stevenson and
Wolfers emphasize women’s new equality to men in
educational attainment and career opportunities, they seem
to assume that men and women are similarly equal at home.
They admit that parenting responsibilities require more
complicated coordination than other household responsibil-
Soc (2010) 47:234–239
ities, but seem to assume that Becker was wrong in
supposing that mothers enjoy at least some advantage over
fathers in childrearing and rather assume that parenting is
an equal-opportunity enterprise.
In order to know whether we ought to cast aside our
understanding of the household as aiming at production
rather than consumption, we need be able to address
questions of this sort. Further, we need to say whether the
significant changes we have seen in household arrange-
ments in the last half-century have been driven by a change
in the character of marriage or by other phenomena. Other
changes in the economy and in the social networks might
may well account for much of what Stevenson and Wolfers
ascribe to a change in the character of marriage.
Have Families Changed?
In fact, there are rival explanations for the changes we
observe in household arrangements and women’s patterns
of education and work than a fundamental change in the
character of marriage. Changes in our knowledge-based
economy offer plausible explanations for the increased
similarities in spousal educational attainment and workforce
participation by married women with small children other
than Stevenson and Wolfers’ explanation predicated on a
wholesale change in the character of marriage. A rival
account would begin with the increased importance of
college and other post-secondary education for many jobs,
and the incentive this provides for many young people to
delay marriage while they pursue education and launch a
career. When young men and women graduate from college
and enter workplaces where nearly all their peers have
college degrees, it is no surprise that they meet and marry
other college graduates. The social network of the average
twenty-six year old college graduate simply does not
include anyone without a college degree to consider as a
prospective mate. Indeed, as Stevenson and Wolfers (2007)
note, the internet has increased market fragmentation in the
dating market just as it has for many other markets. Social
networking sites such as Facebook apparently open a wide
horizon of social opportunities but in fact serve to introduce
young people to others whose education, aims, and habits
are very much like their own. Several decades ago, when
many people got married at twenty-two to high-school
classmates or fellow church congregants there was simply
more diversity, at least in terms of educational attainment
and career goals, in the dating market for college-educated
young people than there is today. Given these changes in
the dating market, it is not surprising that the gap in spousal
educational attainment has narrowed.
Moreover, changes in the economy explain why married
women with children no longer specialize exclusively in
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homemaking. Many middle-class women work, or work full-
time when they would prefer part-time work, not because they
want to do so but because they must in order to purchase a
home near a good public school, as Elizabeth Warren and
Amelia Warren Tyagi argued in The Two-Income Trap: Why
Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke (2003). It is simply
very hard to afford a middle-class lifestyle on one income,
and so women who might enjoy a few years at home with
their children remain in the workforce. Staying a home with
children has become, for many, an unaffordable luxury.
In many families with children, parents do not make similar
investments in career and homemaking, as Stevenson and
Wolfers suppose. Instead, there is a shift from mothers
working only in the home to mothers continuing to carry the
greatest share of homemaking while entering the workforce,
albeit for fewer hours than their husbands. The really
interesting questions missed by Stevenson and Wolfers
concern why women with children continue to spend more
time in homemaking and less time in their careers than fathers,
in spite of the gains in women’s opportunity to participate in
the paid economy, and how parents split home responsibilities
when they both spend many hours each week at work.
Stevenson and Wolfers’ hedonic marriage model has no
answers to these questions. On the other hand, Becker’s
argument that even very small advantages of mothers over
fathers in childcare can make for very great differences in time
and effort in division of childcare between parents serves as a
starting point for taking up these questions. One does not need
to be a thoughtless sexist or blinded by tradition to suppose
that, at least with small children, mothers may have some
modest advantages over fathers in childcare.
A 2005 study of the choices made by female physicians
by economist Alicia Sasser nicely illustrates the continued
importance of production complementarities as the most
satisfying economic account of the family. Sasser drew on
longitudinal data from an American Medical Association
survey of the same young physicians in 1987 and 1991 to
study whether female physicians who married and had
children worked less and earned less than their single female
or male counterparts. Female physicians are exactly the sort
of women that Stevenson and Wolfers would expect to enter
hedonic marriages: they have made large investments in
education and career, and are unlikely to be domineered by
their husbands or to accept traditional stereotypes about the
sexual division of labor. Moreover, of the married female
physicians, 94% had husbands who worked and 40% had
husbands who were also physicians, which suggests exactly
the sort of parallel investments in education and career by
husband and wife that should make the traditional sexual
division of labor irrational and point toward an egalitarian
marriage based on consumption complementarities.
Nevertheless, Sasser's findings show that female physi-
cians are far from being mirrors of their male counterparts in
238
terms of career and household effort. She found that female
physicians who have one child work 9% fewer hours per
year and those with two children work 15% fewer hours per
year than other physicians. They are drawn to less lucrative
specialties and practices that allow for more regular work
schedules. The gap in hours and differences in specialties
and practices results in an earnings gap of greater than 20%
compared to childless female physicians—while male
physicians with children work more and earn more than
childless male physicians. Sasser's findings do not support
Becker's theories in every detail: for example, contrary to
Becker's hypothesis that women who devote time and effort
to rearing children will invest less in their careers and thus
earn less per hour, Sasser found that, controlling for specialty
and practice setting, female physicians with children earned
as much per hour as their peers. Nevertheless, Sasser's study
on the whole clearly support the basic analysis given by
Becker, namely that production complementarities–and
particularly the effort in rearing children–shape the division
of household activities between husbands and wives in
families with children.
Moreover, if childrearing were truly best understood as
an activity of joint consumption and mothers and fathers
were equals at home as well as in the workplace, one would
expect participation by fathers and mothers to have become
much more equal as fathers sought to share equally with
mothers in its enjoyment. A June 2008 New York Times
Magazine article on couples’ attempts at equal parenting
highlighted how unusual truly equal parenting remains, and
how maintaining the principle of equal parenting required
sacrifices of efficiency when parents needed to coordinate
their shared childcare (Belkin 2008). Because equal par-
enting means sacrificing gains from specialization, the
parenting could take more total effort than in families
where one parent, usually the mother, took the lead. Some
families described in the article found themselves under
pressures that prompted them to revert with regret back to a
model where the mother focused more on homemaking and
the father put greater effort into his career in order to enjoy
the gains from specialization in different activities.
Fathers today are often more active participants in
childrearing than their fathers were. However, it is still true
that mothers are the more active parents even when they
also hold full-time paid work. Becker’s account of the value
to the household of mothers’ greater role in childrearing
helps to explain why this pattern has persisted in spite of
great changes in women’s workforce participation. Becker’s
account also helps to counter the sense that women are still
not equal to men when wives continue to do more at home
than their husbands and spend fewer hours at work. In any
case, what we have seen in the last fifty years is a shift from
mothers working only at home to their bearing the greatest
share of homemaking and childrearing while now working
Soc (2010) 47:234–239
many hours in the paid workforce. This persistent pattern of
women bearing the greatest share of making a home attests
to the enduring character of home and family life as
concerned with production and reproduction.
Policy Consequences
Economists typically favor deregulation, and Stevenson and
Wolfers are no exception. They argue for the deregulation
of marriage so as to remove limits on who may marry (and
so allow same-sex marriage) and to get rid of any category
of divorce other than no-fault divorce. After all, if marriage
is for hedonic consumption, what argument could justify
keeping a couple from marriage, or forcing a couple to stay
together when the fun is over?
But this ignores the fact that the focus of controversy in
all our debates about marriage and family concern the
production and rearing of children. Gay marriage is
controversial exactly because some people are concerned,
rightly or wrongly, about childrearing in gay households.
No-fault divorce is controversial because of concerns about
the impact of divorce on minor children. Economic
analyses can help us think though these controversies in
ways that are illuminating, but only if we hold to the
hypothesis that families form to produce children and other
special household goods, not to consume goods. Stevenson
and Wolfers’ arguments are perhaps appropriate to childless
and empty-nest marriages, which are more common today
than a half-century ago. Nevertheless, for families with
children, the challenges and pressures of childrearing are
such that these, not consumption complementarities, deter-
mine the division of time and effort between the parents.
Moreover, Stevenson and Wolfers come close to admit-
ting that children and their production are at heart of
difficult questions about divorce. For, one would think, if
marriage has just been a partnership for consumption rather
than for production of children, there would be no reason to
take into account a wife’s time out of the workforce to bear
and raise children in a divorce settlement. After all, she has
“consumed” the enjoyment of bearing and raising children
and the leisure attendant upon staying out of the paid
workforce. But Stevenson and Wolfers write that, “Judges
can recognize investments that are made such as spousal
support during the early years of a career when hard work
and sacrifice are rewarded by higher salaries later in life”
(2008c). This belies their argument that marriage is for
consumption, because no one “invests” in consumption; we
invest in production, and the situation they describe is one
in which one spouse has invested in future increased
production by the household.
We may find reasons to adopt some of the policies
Stevenson and Wolfers suggest. For example, there are
Soc (2010) 47:234–239
important arguments against requiring or allowing “fault”
for divorce, and Stevenson and Wolfers (2006) contribute to
these arguments with their research that the trend toward
unilateral divorce is related to a decline in domestic
violence and female suicide. However, even if we agree
with some of the policy recommendations of Stevenson and
Wolfers, we should not do so on the false supposition that
the character of marriage has changed and that they
meaning of women’s roles as mothers has shifted.
Consumption vs. Production
Stevenson and Wolfers’ work has much to teach us about
contemporary marriage and families. But their arguments
and conclusions do not warrant their claim that the
character of marriage has changed–or, at a minimum, this
claim should be limited to childless marriages. Their
argument that marriages are essentially about consumption
complementarities and so that households are organized
around efforts to satisfy the tastes and desires of household
members does not recognize the moral seriousness of the
effort to limit and channel one’s consumption that marriage,
or at least marriage with children, imposes on marriage
partners. Consumption, even in company with others, is
ultimately a private activity for one’s own benefit.
Provision for a family means facing up to the difficulties
of providing for home and family when time and other
resources are scarce. The basic economic problem for
families is not, as Stevenson and Wolfers imply, coordina-
tion of taste and consumption but provision under con-
ditions of scarcity. To meet this challenge, parents sacrifice
their own wishes and desires for the sake of the household
and the happiness of others.
Thus, it is simply not true to the experience of most
marriages, even happy and loving ones, that marriage is a
hedonic partnership of shared consumption. Marriage requires
forsaking or redirecting consumption–not just “forsaking all
others,” but giving up or limiting one’s participation in
Saturday afternoon sports games, trips abroad, and other
activities because one’s husband or wife does not enjoy those
activities or because the need to save for other priorities make
these unaffordable. However, it is truly children that discipline
consumption and focus household effort on production.
Diapers, daycare, new shoes, and college savings plan
contributions mean that parents have hardly anything left
over for a babysitter to enjoy a night out at a movie.
Meanwhile, every parent who has changed a diaper (again),
swept up spilt Cheerios (again), and driven the kids to soccer
practice (again) knows that “the joint project of bringing up
children” that Stevenson and Wolfers mention is not hedonic
consumption–even if it filled with its own delights and
charms. It is true that the hard work of bringing up children
239
is “simply better shared with another person” but this is at least
as much because it makes childrearing bearable as because it
makes it more fun.
Building a home means that one is making something
that was not there before and sharing it with others. This is
fundamentally an activity of production shared by family
members because they enjoy, in the language of economics,
production complementarities, not consumption comple-
mentarities. At least for families with children, Becker’s
household production model still helps us better to
understand the complicated choices and trade-offs made
by families as they share the effort to make a home
together. Stevenson and Wolfers would mislead us when
they think that the very many changes that have been
wrought by contemporary economic forces have changed
the character of family life, because they disregard the
moral status of marriage that comes from its demands of
sacrifice for the sake of other family members.
Further Reading
Becker, G. 1981 [1991]. A Treatise on the family. Cambridge and
London: Harvard University Press.
Belkin, L. 2008. When mom and dad share it all. New York Times
Magazine, June 15, 2008.
Bergmann, B. 1995. Becker’s theory of the family: Preposterous
conclusions. Feminist Economics, 1, 141–150.
Isen, A., & Stevenson, B. 2008. Women’s education and family
behavior: Trends in marriage, divorce, and fertility. Research
working paper.
Pollack, R. 2003. Gary Becker’s contributions to family and household
economics. Review of Economics of the Household, 1, 111–141.
Sasser, A. C. 2005. Gender differences in physician pay: Tradeoffs
between career and family. The Journal of Human Resources,
XL(2), 477–504.
Stevenson, B. 2007. The impact of divorce laws on marriage-specific
capital. Journal of Labor Economics, 25(1), 75–94.
Stevenson, B., & Wolfers, J. 2006. Bargaining in the shadow of the
law: Divorce laws and family distress. Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 121, 267–288.
Stevenson, B., & Wolfers, J. 2007. Marriage and divorce: Changes
and their driving forces. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21
(2), 27–52.
Stevenson, B., & Wolfers, J. 2008a. Marriage and the market. Cato
Unbound, January 18, 2008.
Stevenson, B., & Wolfers, J. 2008b. Divorce and children: What do
we know? Cato Unbound, January 27.
Stevenson, B., & Wolfers, J. 2008c. (De-)regulating the family. Cato
Unbound, January 30, 2008.
Stevenson, B., & Wolfers, J. 2008d. How should we think about the
taxpayer consequences of divorce. Council on Contemporary
Families, April 15, 2008.
Warren, E., & Tyagi, A. W. 2003. The two-income trap: Why middle-
class parents are going broke. New York: Basic Books.
Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill is a writer living in Annapolis, Maryland.
She has served on the faculties of The College of William & Mary and
St. John’s College, Annapolis.