The Meaning of the Adjectives

Dependent, unoccupied, inactive, non-gainful—to the casual reader the words may seem like routine jargon harmlessly applied. But these adjectives reinforced the assumption that men contributed more than women to economic growth.

Much also rides on the seemingly abstract debate over economic meta­phors for children. Are they like pets, consumer durables, citizens, or investment goods? If investment goods, do they yield benefits only to themselves or also to their parents or to society as a whole? Many public policies reflect the assumption that children, like pets, are primarily con­sumption goods. In 1939 the U.S. Board of Tax Appeals held that childcare expenses should not be deductible as a work-related expense because they simply reflect a preference for a particular form of consumption.⁵⁹ Changes in U.S. tax law since then have allowed only a small proportion of actual childcare expenses to be deducted. The U.S. subsidizes childrearing— especially by single mothers—less generously than Britain or France.⁶⁰

The notion that family work is sacred provides a kind of buffer against the sharp edge of selfish calculation. One could argue that the work of wives and mothers is so infinitely valuable that it would only be demeaned by estimation of a market price. But the exclusion of non-market work from the definition of ‘‘the economy’’ had distributional consequences that marked the influence of collective interests: it weakened women’s claims on the income of other family members and the larger income of the polity. It also diverted economists’ attention from an important determinant of living standards.