NCCC052: Family Economics
Statement of Issues and Justification
Family economists uniquely recognize the importance of the family as an economic institution that interacts with a broader community system to acquire, develop, and utilize human and material resources. Research of family economists provides policymakers and program administrators with information critical to developing and implementing sound, cost-effective policies and practices to promote family well-being. Consequently, family economists are well positioned to address the two North Central cross-cutting research areas, namely, (a) Economic Development and Policy and (b) Social Change and Development.Several emerging family economics issues exist. Communities and families today face critical economic issues in increasingly complex and diverse environments. Rural and urban families struggle to maintain economic stability in a changing economy. The population is aging and becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. Financial concerns exist across the lifespan. Young adults face escalating costs of higher education, increasing indebtedness, and a rising number of bankruptcies. Midlife adults and elders are concerned with retirement income adequacy, rising health care costs, and management of elder care.
To confront these critical issues, family economists have the expertise to investigate financial socialization of children in a demographically diverse culture and explore the implications of cultural differences in the perception and management of money. They can identify ways to improve financial literacy of youth and to influence credit management and saving behavior early in life. With their view of family as a system in the broader economy, family economists are well positioned to investigate the interrelationship of health status, health related costs, caregiving, and acquisition and maintenance of financial security across the lifespan.
A major purpose of this committee is facilitating collaboration among family economics researchers nationally and internationally. The committee provides a forum to examine research methodology and family economic issues in depth from a multidisciplinary perspective. The committee fosters development of research related to the economic well-being of individuals and families that is of interest to multiple institutions around the nation. For example, this committee recently served as a catalyst to launch two major regional research projects, NC 1011: Rural Low-Income Families: Tracking their Well-being and Function in an Era of Welfare Reform, and NC 1013: The Economic and Psychological Determinants of Household Savings.
Over the next five years, the committee will continue to promote rigorous and relevant research in family economics and expand efforts to link its work with researchers in other disciplines and other states and with personnel in resident instruction and outreach positions. The committee will also strive to increase the overall quality, quantity, and competitiveness of family economics research by strengthening the research infrastructure of the profession. It will endeavor to generate additional multi-state, multidiscipline research projects on emerging family economics issues. The NCCC 52 committee is unique in its scope (as determined by a CRIS search) and does not duplicate the efforts of other NC/NCCC/NCERA projects.
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