RICARDO ANDRÉS GUZMÁN () (Escuela de Administración, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)
Abstract
Firms in modern western world are often said to encourage people to prioritize work over family life. This imbalance, some personnel psychologist claim, causes tension and unhappiness. The story, however, is not new. Something very similar happened during the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture, some 10,000 years ago. Working time increased alongside population. Meanwhile, consumption remained at the subsistence level. I show, using a neoclassical economic, that the technological improvements associated to agriculturization induce free, rational and self-interested hunter-gatherers to adopt agriculture. As a result, working time increases while consumption remains at the subsistence level, and population begins to grow until diminishing returns to labor bring it to a halt. Welfare, which depends on consumption, leisure, and fertility, rises at first; but after a few generations it falls below its initial level. Still, the adoption of agriculture is irreversible. The latter generations choose to remain farmers because, at their current levels of population, reverting to hunting and gathering would reduce their welfare.
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Publisher Info
Article provided by Escuela de Administracion. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. in its journal ABANTE.
Find related papers by JEL classification: J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Social Norms and Social Capital; Social Networks Economic Anthropology
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Eckstein, Zvi & Stern, Steven & Wolpin, Kenneth I, 1988.
"Fertility Choice, Land, and the Malthusian Hypothesis,"
International Economic Review,
Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 29(2), pages 353-61, May.
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