We try to prescind from psychology and to concentrate on formulating macroeconomics as the objective explanatory science of the dynamic economic process involving values. However, in two previous posts, we have seen fit to point out the importance of culture in the hierarchical scheme of human values. Click here  and here.

We have also, in a previous post, Just Thinkin’, questioned the effectiveness of throwing ever more money at what are fundamentally cultural problems.

How many socioeconomic problems are primarily cultural problems, with leaders throwing more and more money in vain at what are basically problems of culture and its ethos? A president or prime minister or chancellor must not confuse cultural problems with economic problems.  A vast educational effort is called for.

Melissa Kearney (University of Maryland) has recently released a cogent statistical study, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind.  It is worth reading for consideration of how humans – in their aggregated microeconomic activities – may be adapting well or poorly in their culture to the objective laws of the macroeconomic process.

Kearney, Melissa, (2023) The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind (Chicago, University of Chicago Press)

A must-read. Liber legendus est.

(Greg Mankiw’s Blog of 9/11/2023 lists Prof. Kearney’s book as one of six required readings in his First-Year Seminar. Click here.  Also, M. Kearney’s book has recently been reviewed favorably by Michael Luca in the Wall Street Journal of 9/25/2023, page A17).