Household economics

The domestic economy is concerned as a scientific discipline with the households , the business studies with companies. These two individual economics , together with economics, form the basic structure of economics . In the specialist literature, a distinction is occasionally made between household economics, the real area of household economics, and household economics, the science of household.

Households as the basis of economic institutions

Households are the basic way of life and economy for people in all societies. They serve to supply and optimize the benefits of their members (see private households as basic organizations of society). Companies have historically developed from households, or more precisely: from the productive areas of households, and continue to do so today (start-ups and business start-ups); these companies serve to generate income for their owners.

Political-civic participation also originates in the private household. The peasant uprisings and the Central European Peasants' War in 1525 had an important cause in the interest of maintaining the peasant household, for example not to be ruined by inheritance taxes in the event of death and not to be ruined by the prince's taxes in everyday life ( Twelve Articles ). The aim was the long-term preservation of the house (household) as a livelihood for the children and grandchildren.

Households are supply systems which, in contrast to companies, are not primarily controlled via markets, but rather align their service provision primarily with the hoped-for benefit to their members or recipients.

Private households form a functional shell for familial or other private forms of life; they produce personal goods and thus strive for the immediate satisfaction of their members' needs. Public budgets of local authorities, such as the state budget, provide public and collective goods and thus want to promote the welfare of society or of certain groups.

The provision of public budgets is primarily controlled by monopolies of power (such as dictatorships, monarchies), in democratically constituted states by political elections, group negotiations, bureaucracies and hierarchies as well as by media and lobbying. In private households, on the other hand, love, solidarity and negotiation structures (e.g. family conference) play a major role as control systems. In contrast, the production of goods from companies is primarily controlled by capital and sales markets, i. H. through capital investment by investors and purchase decisions by those who buy these things (real estate and goods) and services offered and traded on markets.

In addition to private households (of individuals living alone, families, part families and other cohabitants) and public households (of local authorities such as states, states and municipalities), institutional and association households can be viewed as further groups of households.

Institutional households , e.g. B. boarding schools, monasteries, but also kindergartens, old people's homes and prisons, create utility services for their members as an alternative or in addition to private households. In addition, there are club budgets , such as social and sports clubs, which serve a further supplementary collective requirement coverage in which the joint provision of services is essential for the benefit of the members.

Institutional and association budgets can have private or public sponsors. For these, too, it applies that they do not base their service provision on the exchange principle and market opportunities, but on the solidarity principle and the immediate coverage of the needs of the members or the persons to be provided for, and consequently provide their services free of charge or at prices that cover costs at most. Institutional and association budgets are therefore also referred to as non-profit organizations.

Private households as consumers and producers

Private households can make a very broad decision between extensive self-sufficiency (subsistence self-sufficiency) and housekeeping that is almost entirely geared towards bought-in consumption. A subsistence way of life, that would be kitchen gardens and livestock husbandry on the one hand, or an extensive consumer household, i.e. living in a hotel with the purchase of all required goods and services, on the other, are possible. To put it less extreme: a household can e.g. B. with freshly bought products at the market and prepared at home or largely with convenience foods.

Own production and / or purchase

In the first case, the household chores are extensive; you buy fewer goods or more original products and produce more yourself, in the second case it is exactly the opposite: food that is almost ready to eat is bought and only slightly further prepared. This broad design ability makes households economically adaptable to changed circumstances (unemployment, illness, death, separations) or to redesigned life plans and also politically open to discourse as citizens.

Commercial activities

They need money for the goods that households buy on the market and for tax payments and monetary gifts. This money is mainly earned through commercial activities. This can be done by selling services or other self-made goods ( entrepreneurs ) or exploiting the labor and skills of household members on the labor market ( employees ).

Household economics distinguishes between main, secondary and additional employment, depending on the amount of time spent working as a self-employed person .

Household production in the narrow sense

The dirty laundry of a small family can be taken to a commercial laundry (outsourcing, purchased consumption) or cleaned at home (household production in the narrow sense). Household technology goods such as washing machines, tumble dryers and ironing machines serve to increase the efficiency of this in-house production.

However, the productive nature of households is not widely recognized. On the one hand, this can be traced back to the widespread disregard for household work, and on the other hand, to the dogmatics in the traditionally oriented economics and social sciences. In micro and macroeconomics in particular, as well as in sociology, only companies are assigned a productive economic function, while households and families are seen primarily as consumers. The economic role of the state and the associations is also assigned to the consumption sector rather than the production sector.

In fact, in all households, as in companies, resources are used that come directly from nature or have been obtained from suppliers, and are converted in further production processes in order to create the desired benefits, which, if successful, are assigned a higher economic value than the value of the sum of the input goods.

Due to the dominance of the non-market control systems in the household sector, however, the market economy concepts of success planning and measurement can only be applied to a very limited extent. That is the real problem of household economics. Only in private households can the costs and benefits of the provision of services be directly balanced in many cases by weighing up the joy of work and the suffering, as well as the use of money and the creation of benefits. In the case of household types that serve to cover external needs (public budgets as well as institutional and association budgets), the votes of the members or those affected, such as voting decisions and satisfaction surveys, must ultimately be interpreted as success indicators. For strategic and operational management, however, management tools inspired by business management, such as income-expenditure calculations and cost-benefit analyzes, are used.

Traditional understanding of production

In the economic classic, only the agricultural and handicraft production of goods was considered production. All services were interpreted as consumption because no material, storable result was recognizable. In the neoclassical era, the concept of production was extended to all market services. Unpaid services, especially household chores, are still almost without exception not counted as production in micro and macroeconomics and in national accounts.

Extended understanding of household production

In neo-neoclassical economics, on the other hand, the productive character of household work is emphasized and the traditional demarcation between production and consumption is understood only as a way of interpreting the household process. Household services, such as prepared food, washed laundry and tidy rooms, can be interpreted as intermediate goods for the creation of even more complex products, such as health, human wealth and life satisfaction, and so-called consumption can be seen as the final transformation in utility foundations. From the point of view of environmental economics, too, the economic differentiation between production and consumption can be completely called into question. Because the entire economic process is based on the transformation of natural goods into capital goods and consumer goods as well as residues and pollutants. Production and consumption are therefore inextricably linked, like two sides of the same coin.

Private households as basic organizations of society

From an institutional economic point of view, private households are the basic organizations of economy and society in modern societies. Economic activity is a completely interdependent process. But when looking for a starting point and an end point, only private households are considered in free societies.

Households are set up on their own responsibility by their members and develop supply structures in their environment. They decide on the micro level under the social framework conditions about the acquisition and use of funds to shape their living situation. These include decisions about lifestyle, housekeeping, starting a family, participation in dependent employment or starting a business, as well as social and political participation. In this way, the many individual private households in the aggregation at the macro level help shape the framework conditions for economic and social life in the medium and long term. The statistical concept of household as well as the modern concept of the way of life in official statistics only covers the listed contents to a very limited extent.

Subject framework of household economics as a science

Since households are supported by personal relationships, embedded in society and in many ways interlinked with the economy, household economics must have a multidisciplinary orientation, otherwise it would not be able to adequately describe and explain the diversity of private households in particular and their historical appearance. For reasons of evidence, humans should be understood anthropologically as necessarily cooperating beings, not as egoistic utility maximizers in the sense of the homo economicus of classical economic theory.

In terms of philosophy of science, an action-theoretical (and, as mentioned: multidisciplinary) approach is necessary, because life and economic activity in a household - and with this household within politics, economy and society - is based on goals, long-term plans that you have chosen yourself or that have been agreed in the life association and expectations, in other words: acting in and out of the household makes meaningful reference to other people and institutions; people are more or less pronounced creative actors.

Of the scientific areas in addition to household economics that take household economics into account, particular mention should be made of everyday history, family psychology, family sociology, social psychology, household technology, sociology of technology, cultural studies (cultural studies, cultural anthropology), nutritional science. Consumption economics should be understood as a sub-area that primarily deals with the consumption area of private households.

literature

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