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Production and reproduction: Family policy and gender inequality in East and West Germany

Lynn Susan Duggan, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Abstract

This dissertation examines the impacts of family policies on the economic position of women in East and West Germany in 1989-90. Chapter I reviews and critiques neoclassical and Marxian theories of women's subordination, focussing on the neoclassical postulate of a joint household utility function and the absence of a Marxian analysis of reproduction. Chapter II describes and analyzes the specific family policies and policy climates of East and West Germany prior to unification in 1990, providing a brief overview of the history of family policy, women's employment, and fertility from World War I to the present. Chapter III models the costs of childrearing, state subsidies of childrearing, and the shares of the remaining costs distributed to men and women, using 1989-90 data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Estimated costs include the opportunity costs of women's earnings and men's and women's leisure. Chapter IV uses the same data to compare the effects of family policies on the childbearing choices of women of different marital status, educational backgrounds, incomes, and levels of labor force attachment within each country. Chapter V models the allocation of household work, with a focus on male/female bargaining power in East and West Germany, again using cross-sectional analysis. Chapter VI summarizes the results of the dissertation as a whole.

Subject Area

Economic theory|Womens studies|Labor economics

Recommended Citation

Duggan, Lynn Susan, "Production and reproduction: Family policy and gender inequality in East and West Germany" (1993). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9329599.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9329599

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