The institution of family may be examined by various fields of study – Sociology, Psychology, History, Law, Economics, etc. This article aims to look at the family from the viewpoint of economic analysis of law. It presents the household as a cell producing and consuming commodities which may not be purchased in the market environment. Such commodities mean children, prestige and reputation, health, altruism, and sensual pleasure. Consumption of home commodities does not reduce the quantity of commodities in other households. The article presents the family as the institution which is responsible for a substantial part of economic activities because of its offer of manufacturing factors (labour, capital) and consumption of goods and services. Owing to these reasons, the family has an indispensable influence on the economic environment. However, this holds true even vice versa. Technological progress has been changing the economic environment and such changes have been reflected in the family and its functions. The present article analyses the marriage market, the position of women in the labour market, the division of work in households, the decrease in birth rate and the increase in divorce rate and their relationship, and tries to answer the question of whether state interventions in the family are efficient
The article examines the long-term changes and the age homogamy of marriages that took place in the Czech Republic between 1920 and 2000. The analysis of data acquired from a study of vital registration is divided into a descriptive part - describing the age structure of the marriage market and the absolute degree of age homogamy - and an exploratory part - creating a log-linear model of the structure and changes of relative age homogamy. Three hypotheses are formulated in connection with the latter part of the analysis, of which the hypothesis about increasing age homogamy seems acceptable. Results from the descriptive analysis and the models show that age homogamy has been increasing during the 20th century, both in the case of first marriages and remarriages. The hypothesis about the greater degree of age heterogamy in the case of remarriages can also be accepted, while the testing of the third hypothesis, that the older the marital partners are the more heterogamous their age structure, proved inconclusive and requires further investigation.