Editing Gary Becker (section)

=== Economics of the family ===
During Becker's time at Chicago in the 1970s, he mostly focused on the family. He had previously done work on birth rates and family size, and he used this time to expand his understanding of how economics works within a family.<ref name="nobelbio" /> Some specific family issues covered during this time were marriage, divorce, altruism toward other members of the family, investments by parents in their children, and long-term changes in what families do. All of Becker's research on the family resulted in ''A Treatise on the Family'' (1981). Throughout the decade, he contributed new ideas and information, and in 1991 an expanded edition of the work was published. His research applies basic economic assumptions such as maximizing behavior, preferences, and equilibrium to the family. He analyzed determinants for marriage and divorce, family size, parents' allocation of time to their children, and changes in wealth over several generations. This publication was an extensive overview of the economics of the family and helped to unite economics with other fields like sociology and anthropology.<ref>Becker, Gary S. ([1981] 1991).  ''A Treatise on the Family'',  Enl. edition. [https://books.google.com/books?id=NLB1Ty75DOIC Description] and [https://books.google.com/books?id=NLB1Ty75DOIC&pg=PR7 preview]. Harvard University Press. {{ISBN|0674906985}}.</ref>

==== Rotten kid theorem ====
At the core of Becker's economic theory on the [[family]], which he developed on the basis of figures for United States families in 1981, is the ''rotten kid theorem''. He applied the economics of an ''altruist'' to a family, wherein a person takes actions that improve the well-being of another person, despite more self-interested action being feasible. Becker pointed out that a parent foregoes higher income, by focusing on family work commitments in order to maximize a well-meaning objective. Becker also theorized that a child in a US family may be perfectly selfish because it maximizes its own utility. There have been attempts to test this economic thesis, in the course of which it was found that cross-generational families do not necessarily maximize their joint income.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Game Theory Evolving: A Problem-centered Introduction to Modeling Strategic Behavior |author=Herbert Gintis |publisher= Princeton University Press|year=2000 |isbn=9780691009438 |pages=34–35}}</ref>