IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pch/abante/v10y2007i2p93-125.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Life-Work Balance During The Neolithic Revolution

Author

Listed:
  • RICARDO ANDRÉS GUZMÁN

    (Escuela de Administración, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)

Abstract

Firms in modern western world are often said to encourage people to prioritize work over family life. This imbalance, some personnel psychologist claim, causes tension and unhappiness. The story, however, is not new. Something very similar happened during the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture, some 10,000 years ago. Working time increased alongside population. Meanwhile, consumption remained at the subsistence level. I show, using a neoclassical economic, that the technological improvements associated to agriculturization induce free, rational and self-interested hunter-gatherers to adopt agriculture. As a result, working time increases while consumption remains at the subsistence level, and population begins to grow until diminishing returns to labor bring it to a halt. Welfare, which depends on consumption, leisure, and fertility, rises at first; but after a few generations it falls below its initial level. Still, the adoption of agriculture is irreversible. The latter generations choose to remain farmers because, at their current levels of population, reverting to hunting and gathering would reduce their welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Ricardo Andrés Guzmán, 2007. "Life-Work Balance During The Neolithic Revolution," Abante, Escuela de Administracion. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., vol. 10(2), pages 93-125.
    • Handle: RePEc:pch:abante:v:10:y:2007:i:2:p:93-125
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.abante.cl/files/ABT/Contenidos/Vol-10-N2/Guzman.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eckstein, Zvi & Stern, Steven & Wolpin, Kenneth I, 1988. "Fertility Choice, Land, and the Malthusian Hypothesis," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 29(2), pages 353-361, May.
    2. Blundell, Richard & Macurdy, Thomas, 1999. "Labor supply: A review of alternative approaches," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 27, pages 1559-1695, Elsevier.
    3. Michele Boldrin & Larry E. Jones, 2002. "Mortality, Fertility, and Saving in a Malthusian Economy," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 5(4), pages 775-814, October.
    4. Jacob L. Weisdorf, 2003. "Stone Age Economics: The Origins of Agriculture and the Emergence of Non-Food Specialists," Discussion Papers 03-34, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    5. Jacob L. Weisdorf, 2005. "From Foraging To Farming: Explaining The Neolithic Revolution," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(4), pages 561-586, September.
    6. Razin, Assaf & Ben-Zion, Uri, 1975. "An Intergenerational Model of Population Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(5), pages 923-933, December.
    7. Nerlove, Marc & Razin, Assaf & Sadka, Efraim, 1986. "Endogenous Population with Public Goods and Malthusian Fixed Resources: Efficiency or Market Failure," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 27(3), pages 601-609, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guzmán, Ricardo Andrés & Weisdorf, Jacob, 2011. "The Neolithic Revolution from a price-theoretic perspective," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 209-219, November.
    2. Rowthorn, Robert & Guzmán, Ricardo Andrés & Rodríguez-Sickert, Carlos, 2008. "The economics of early social stratification," MPRA Paper 10115, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Guzmán, Ricardo Andrés, 2007. "Many hands make hard work, or why agriculture is not a puzzle," MPRA Paper 4148, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 08 Aug 2007.
    4. Michael Grimm, 2000. "Comportement familial, inégalités et croissance : Une revue de la littérature," Working Papers DT/2000/09, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    5. Schoonbroodt, Alice & Tertilt, Michèle, 2014. "Property rights and efficiency in OLG models with endogenous fertility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 551-582.
    6. Chu, Angus C. & Xu, Rongxin, 2024. "From Neolithic Revolution to industrialization," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(3), pages 699-717, April.
    7. David N. Weil & Oded Galor, 2000. "Population, Technology, and Growth: From Malthusian Stagnation to the Demographic Transition and Beyond," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 806-828, September.
    8. Quamrul Ashraf & Stelios Michalopoulos, 2013. "Climatic Fluctuations and the Di§usion of Agriculture," Working Papers 2013-3, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    9. John William Hatfield, 2008. "Backward Intergenerational Goods and Endogenous Fertility," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(5), pages 765-784, October.
    10. Zvi Eckstein & Pedro Mira & Kenneth I. Wolpin, 1999. "A Quantitative Analysis of Swedish Fertility Dynamics: 1751-1990," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 2(1), pages 137-165, January.
    11. Robinson, James A. & Srinivasan, T.N., 1993. "Long-term consequences of population growth: Technological change, natural resources, and the environment," Handbook of Population and Family Economics, in: M. R. Rosenzweig & Stark, O. (ed.), Handbook of Population and Family Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 21, pages 1175-1298, Elsevier.
    12. Sato, Yasuhiro, 2007. "Economic geography, fertility and migration," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 372-387, March.
    13. Quamrul Ashraf & Stelios Michalopoulos, 2010. "The Climatic Origins of the Neolithic Revolution: Theory and Evidence," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0751, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    14. Alice Schoonbroodt, 2010. "Who Owns Children and Does It Matter?," Working Papers id:2360, eSocialSciences.
    15. Greenwood, Jeremy & Seshadri, Ananth, 2005. "Technological Progress and Economic Transformation," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 19, pages 1225-1273, Elsevier.
    16. Luciano Fanti & Luca Gori, 2013. "Fertility-related pensions and cyclical instability," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(3), pages 1209-1232, July.
    17. Serge Svizzero, 2015. "The long-term decline in terms of trade and the neolithisation of Northern Europe," Post-Print hal-02150104, HAL.
    18. Quamrul Ashraf & Stelios Michalopoulos, 2015. "Climatic Fluctuations and the Diffusion of Agriculture," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(3), pages 589-609, July.
    19. Hiroshi Aiura & Yasuhiro Sato, 2014. "A model of urban demography," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 47(3), pages 981-1009, August.
    20. Luciano Fanti & Luca Gori, 2014. "Endogenous fertility, endogenous lifetime and economic growth: the role of child policies," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(2), pages 529-564, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Life-work balance; paleoeconomics; Economic anthropology; Neolithic revolution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pch:abante:v:10:y:2007:i:2:p:93-125. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Eduardo Walker (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eapuccl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.