Culture and gender in household economies: The case of Jamaican child support payments

This essay uses the example of child support theory and Jamaican child support practices to argue that greater attention to local contexts and meaning systems can improve the explanatory and predictive power of economic models and their usefulness to policy-makers. The essay summarizes how neoclassical economists have (and have not) incorporated cultural differences into models of child support behavior. It then sketches two alternative approaches to taking cultural differences more seriously. The first approach maintains the logic and basic assumptions of the neoclassical model but accounts for specifically Jamaican constraints on child support behavior. The second approach considers how Jamaicans themselves might model their own child support practices. The essay identifies strengths of these two culturally sensitive child support models but also argues that both models disadvantage women and children by obscuring the opportunity costs of rearing children and helping to rationalize paternal child support default.