Jewish Ideas Daily has been succeeded and re-launched as Mosaic. Read more...

Bryan Caplan


More Expensive by the Dozen More Expensive by the Dozen
Thursday, October 11, 2012 by Dara Horn | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

A hundred years ago, industrial efficiency expert Frank Gilbreth, Jr. claimed that children were “cheaper by the dozen.”  Recently the economist Bryan Caplan made the modern version of the self-interested argument for producing more offspring.  In an exclusive feature from the current issue of the Jewish Review of Books, novelist Dara Horn elegantly begs to differ.  —The Editors