• child services: utility received by parents from having children
    • production and consumption size
    • investment of time and other resources
    • production: # of kids, quality
      • depends on time of 1) mother 2) father 3) market goods
    • we are also concerned with the cost of production
      • cost of production of CS = time of mother, time of father, and Z
        • wages for mother and father
      • if market goods become more expensive, reduce number of market goods and increase wages of mother and father
      • substitution: if dad's wages go up → dad spends less time on production of CS and substitute in market goods + mother's time
        • capturing relative price changes
  • when trying to produce CS, we have 3 inputs
    • time of mother is un-substitutable
      • mother child bond, biological reasons
      • if time of mother goes up, the cost of quantity goes up by more than cost of quality
  • consumption of CS

    • utility of U(Cs, A) A = all other goods

    • isolate effects of one thing

    • parents are constrained by budget

    • whatever price of CS + whatever they consume, + what they're spending on other goods, cannot go beyond budget

    • bang for buck, when you're consuming optimally, should be equal

    • equalizing marginal utilities

      • isolating things we're not choosing
      • y is a function of choices within this problem (i.e the choice of CS)
      • maximum possible income = Y F L
      • feelings of richer or poorer come from possibilities
      • wages determine price of child services
      • wages up, more expensive to produce child services

    • what happens with mother's wage increases?