Abstract

In 1972 Charlotte Phelps published “Is the household obsolete?” in the Papers and Proceedings of the prestigious American Economic Review. This densely written seven-page article presents the foundations of a theory of couple formation and of in-couple individual allocation of resources and distribution of goods. It is a pioneering contribution that predates Gary Becker’s (1973) much better known economic theory of marriage. So far Phelps’ original ideas on marriage have not been expressed in mathematical terms. Given that such terms became the norm in economic theories of marriage, I am hereby presenting a formalized version of the core ideas in Phelps (1972) in the hope that this formalization might help scholars appreciate this early economic analysis of marriage.