Household economics
The home economics as a scientific discipline concerned with the households, business administration with companies. These two single economic doctrines, together with the economics, the basic structure of economics. In the literature of science is occasionally between household economy, the real area of budget management, and Household Economics, distinguished by the household.
Households as the basis of economic institutions
Households are the basic living and economic forms of people in all societies. They are used to supply and optimization of use of its members (see Households as grassroots organizations of society). Companies have historically from households, more precisely, from the productive sectors of the households, developed and continue to do so today ( existence and business creation ); these companies are earning the income of their owners.
Even the origin of political- civic participation is in private households. So the peasant uprisings and the Central European peasant war had to be 1525 not ruin an important cause in the interest of preserving the rural household, such as in the event of death not by inheritance, and in everyday life by delivering loads of Prince ( twelve items). The goal was the long-term preservation of the house (household ) as a livelihood for the children and grandchildren.
Households supply systems that are not controlled in contrast to companies primarily on markets, but their service provision primarily on the benefits hoped Foundation for their members or align the receivers.
Households form a functional case for familial or other private forms of life; they produce personal goods and thus strive for immediate gratification of their members. Public budgets of local authorities, such as the state budget, make public and collective goods ready and want to thus promote the welfare of society or certain groups.
The power production of public households is mainly determined by power monopolies controlled (about dictatorships, monarchies ), in democratic States Post by political elections, group negotiations, bureaucracies and hierarchies, as well as by the media and lobbying. In private households, however, love, solidarity and negotiation structures play (such as a family conference) as control systems have a major role. In contrast, the creation of goods from companies is controlled primarily through capital and markets, ie through investment by investors and purchasing decisions of buyers of these offered at markets and traded things (real estate and goods) and services.
In addition to private households (of those living alone, families, sub- families and other communities ) and the government ( from local authorities, such as states, provinces and municipalities), institutional and association budgets can be considered as other groups of households.
Institutional households, for example, Boarding schools, monasteries, as well as kindergartens, nursing homes and prisons, alternatively or in addition to private households create benefits for their members. There are also club budgets, such as social clubs and sports clubs that serve a further supplementary collective satisfy those requirements, in which the joint provision of services for the benefit of the Foundation members is essential.
Institutional and association budgets can have private or public carrier. Also for this is that they align their provision of services not on the principle of exchange and market opportunities, but on the principle of solidarity and on the immediate needs cover of the members or dependents for and issued hence their services free of charge or at most cost -effective prices. Institutional and association budgets are therefore referred to as non-profit organizations.
Households as consumers and producers
Households can choose between a very wide comprehensive in-house production ( self-sufficiency ) and an almost completely focused on consumer household. A Subsistenzlebensform that would vegetable gardens and livestock on the one hand, or an extensive consumer household, or about life in a hotel with all the necessary purchase goods and services on the other hand, are possible. Less extreme way: a household can feed largely by convenience foods or fresh market bought and home -prepared products.
Own production or purchase
In the first case, the house itself provided economic benefits are low, the consumption activity is high, in the second case it is exactly the opposite: it produces itself and buys fewer goods and more original products. This broad organizational capability makes households to changing circumstances (unemployment, illness, death, separation ) or transformed lifestyles economically adaptable and politically to discourse as a citizen.
Acquisition Economic activities
For goods that buy homes on the market, and for tax payments and gifts of money they need money. This money is earned primarily through employment- economic activities. This can be done by one hand with services or other internally generated assets are sold ( company ), or the labor and skills of household members in the labor market are sold (workers).
Household production in the narrow sense
The dirty laundry of a nuclear family, in a commercial laundry where (consumption), or it can be cleaned at home itself ( household production in the narrow sense ). Goods of home appliances, such as washing machine, dryer, ironing machine, are used to increase efficiency of domestic production.
The productive character of households is not generally recognized. This can be the one attributed to the widespread disdain for household work, on the other hand on the dogmatics in the traditionally -oriented economic and social sciences. Especially in micro- and macroeconomics, as well as in sociology only the company is a productive economic function attributed, while households and families are considered primarily as consumers. The economic role of the state and of the associations is rather associated with the consumer sector as the production area.
In fact, in all households, as used in business, resources, obtained directly from nature or have been sourced from suppliers, and are converted into other production processes to create the desired services rendered, where a higher economic value is assigned in case of success as the value of the sum of the starting materials.
Because of the dominance of the non- market-based control systems in the household sector, however, the market economy concepts of performance planning and measurement are only very limited applicability. That is the real problem of the household economy. Only in private households the costs and benefits of service provision in many cases can be directly accounted for by job satisfaction and work suffering as well as use of money and benefit the Foundation shall be weighed against each other. In household forms that serve the foreign demand coverage (the public purse as well as institutional and association budgets ) must ultimately the votes of the members or stakeholders, such choices and satisfaction surveys, are interpreted as indicators of success. However, be economically inspired control instruments, such as income-expenditure accounts and cost -benefit analyzes for the strategic and operational management, are used.
Traditional understanding of production
In the classical economics only the agricultural and artisanal tangible goods production was considered production. All services have been interpreted as consumption because no material, storable result was apparent. In the neoclassical concept of production was extended to all market services. Gratuitous services, particularly domestic work, can still almost invariably not be counted in the micro- and macroeconomics, as well as in the national accounts as a production.
Advanced understanding of household production
In the neo- neoclassical economics, however, the productive character of the household work is highlighted and the conventional boundaries between production and consumption, understood as a way of interpretation of the budget process. The household services, such as prepared food, washed clothes and tidy rooms, can namely as intermediate goods for the production of more complex products, such as health, human capital and life satisfaction, and interpreted the so-called consumption are seen as the last transformation in benefit foundations. Even from the perspective of environmental economics, the economic differentiation between production and consumption are made entirely in question. For the entire economic process is based on the transformation of natural resources into capital goods and consumer goods as well as rest and pollutants. Production and consumption are thus inseparable, like two sides of a coin.
Households as grass-roots organizations of society
Households are from an institutional economic perspective in modern societies the grassroots organizations of business and society. The economy is indeed a completely interdependent process. But when searching for a start and end point, come in liberal societies only households into consideration.
Households are based on their own responsibility by its members and develop supply structures in their environment. You decide on the micro level, the social conditions of the production and use of resources for the design of their living conditions. These include decisions about lifestyle, financial management, family formation, labor force participation in paid employment or business start-up and social and political participation. To make the many individual households in the aggregation at the macro level in the medium and long term the framework of economic and social life with. The statistical household term as well as the modern concept of the life form in the official statistics covering the content listed from very limited.
Subject to budget economics as a science
As households are supported by personal relationships, embedded in society and diverse interlinked with economic, household economy must have a multidisciplinary orientation, since they could describe and explain the diversity of particular households and their historical appearance is not sufficiently otherwise. People would be doing anthropological understanding of evidence as reasons necessarily cooperating beings, not as selfish utility maximizers in the sense of homo economicus of classical economic theory.
Science theory is a theory of action ( and as noted: multidisciplinary) approach necessary for life and agriculture in one household - and with this budget within politics, economy and society - is based on self-selected - or in life association agreed - objectives, long-term plans and expectations, in other words, in and out of the budget takes action out on other people and institutions meaningful terms, people are more or less pronounced shaping actors.
From the fields of science in addition to the household economy, taking into account the household economy, are to be mentioned in particular: Everyday life story, family psychology, family sociology, social psychology, sociology of technology, Cultural Studies ( Cultural Studies, Cultural Anthropology ), nutritional science. As a subspecialty that deals primarily with the consumption of private households, the consumer economy would understand.