Economics question!?

Question

Can someone explain this to me? I don't really get what it's asking! I'm not looking for the answer, but a clearer understanding. It's for my online class.

Consider the costs of any choice that a married couple makes to be the choices that each partner would have made if he or she were not married. These costs are called 'opportunity costs.'

Answer 1

think of what the wife would do if she was not married. For example, she would go out with her girlfriends to a movie. Now, what choice does she make when she is married. For example stays home with hubby. Her opportunity cost being married and staying home with hubby is the fun she could have had going out with her girl friends.

Now you can look at it a different way. What if she gave up a career to be married; then the opportunity cost (at least part of it) of being married is her lost career both money and enjoyment.

You can do this for any decision she makes because she is married, think of it as what would she have done if she was not married then THAT is her opportunity cost

Answer 2

Opportunity cost is basically the sacrifice that one makes when they have to make a decision. So what are some of the sacrifices of getting married over being single?

For example, they might have to make decisions together (where to live, rent or own a home, have children, etc) things like that.

Answer 3

Opportunity cost is the cost of the next best alternative.  So the opportunity cost of going to college is what you would have earned working a job during that period of time (classic example).  So that's like 35k a year tops times 4, opp cost is 140k.  The general idea being going to college raises your level of pay in the future to outweigh that in strict cost benefit analysis.

What you teacher wants, is you to calculate what decision the individuals make as a married couple, and then what they would have made if they were single.  So the opportunity cost of getting married....how much do you save/spend what job do you take, you don't have kids, one of you doesn't take time off work,  that kind of thing I'm guessing.  Kind of hard to compare the psychic benefits of being married or having kids though so the cost benefit won't really hold on other logical grounds than pure financial rationality.