Birth and Fortune: The Impact of Numbers on Personal Welfare

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University of Chicago Press, Apr 15, 1987 - Business & Economics - 228 pages
In this influential work, Richard A. Easterlin shows how the size of a generation—the number of persons born in a particular year—directly and indirectly affects the personal welfare of its members, the make-up and breakdown of the family, and the general well being of the economy.

"[Easterlin] has made clear, I think unambiguously, that the baby-boom generation is economically underprivileged merely because of its size. And in showing this, he demonstrates that population size can be as restrictive as a factor as sex, race, or class on equality of opportunity in the U.S."—Jeffrey Madrick, Business Week
 

Contents

II Family
35
III Society and Economy
95
IV Implications
129
APPENDIX TABLES
183
NOTES
203
INDEX
220
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About the author (1987)

Richard A. Easterlin is professor of economics at the University of Southern California.

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