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Economics for children
A loyal MR reader asks:
I would like to start introducing my daughter (age 8) to the concepts of economics. She is a voracious reader so I thought that might be a great place to start her thinking like an economist (on the other had, she dismisses anything her father tells her out of hand)
Do you have any suggestions on books that would be great for a 3rd or 4th grader?
Any suggestions?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 11, 2006 at 08:00 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
I've been wondering about the same questions myself Dr. Cowen. I recommend the book "What Ever Happened to Penny Candy". I'm VERY interested in more resources myself.
Posted by: Chris Meisenzahl at Dec 11, 2006 7:55:30 AM
That's an easy one. "The Richest Man in Babylon." http://www.amazon.com/Richest-Man-Babylon-George-Clason/dp/0451205367/sr=1-1/qid=1165842513/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-7675755-1143243?ie=UTF8&s=books
It teaches the rewards of saving money, and how to do it. A very famous book. And easy for 8 year old to read, or you can read it to her.
Posted by: Bill Millan at Dec 11, 2006 8:13:55 AM
Ever seen the Ducktales episode on inflation and monetary policy?
Posted by: Miller at Dec 11, 2006 8:27:57 AM
I believe there was a free-marketish series of kids books called "Jonathan Gullible" that Laissez Faire Books used to carry. Also a "princess something-or-other" one. And maybe The Incredible Bread Machine?
Posted by: Julian Sanchez at Dec 11, 2006 8:31:38 AM
Well you can go classic, Ragged Dick and Mark the Match Boy, Horatio Alger. A bit dated and sugar coated, but those were the stories that turned me on to capitalism.
Posted by: matt at Dec 11, 2006 8:41:52 AM
Trade baseball cards. Seriously. Everything "intuitive (i.e. non-mathematical)" I needed to know about economics I learned from trading baseball cards as a kid. The earliest example of arbitrage I saw was on the school bus - there were 2 competing price guides back then (mid-late 1980s), one with higher prices than the other, and I saw one young entrepreneur buying using the "low" price guide at the back of the bus and selling the card he had just bought using the "high" price guide at the front. I didn't know the word for "arbitrage" but I had seen it. I learned that "value is subjective" when I stopped demanding that trades be "equal", meaning that if someone wanted 42 cents worth of my cards I would accept 40 cents worth of their cards that I wanted in return. I learned a about "selling high" when I sold some dealers extra Mackey Sasser and Ricky Jordan cards that I had in my binder. I even learned about budget constraints and consumer choice as I would sit in the baseball card store and think about the different "bundles of goods" that I could buy with my $2 or $5 or $10. My interest in baseball also led me to read all newspaper articles about baseball, which at that time was full of words like "collusion" and "antitrust". I also learned about overproduction and that bubbles eventually burst in the late 80s-early 90s.
So I would suggest "participate in a market" along with "read about a market", and let the child dictate the market by his or her interests (I don't know what "kids these days" like - Yu-gi-oh or Pokemon or Magic maybe, but the nice thing about baseball cards was that their value was in part tied to some force other than the scarcity of the card or the usefulness of the card in playing the game, namely how the player was performing). If the child can grasp the fundamentals of how a market works by seeing it work and then fill in the gaps by reading that might be better than just reading. I don't know how practical that advice is though.
Posted by: AZ at Dec 11, 2006 8:45:44 AM
Thidwick the Good-Hearted Moose by Dr. Suess. An excellent lesson in free riding that kids really enjoy.
Posted by: bastiat at Dec 11, 2006 8:55:16 AM
Miller: Do you know the name of the episode, or anything else that could help me search? I just end up with rubbish.
Posted by: Johan Folin at Dec 11, 2006 9:02:29 AM
Johan Folin,
If you mean the Ducktales Episode, I believe it was "Shangra-la-di-da" or some approximation of that.
Posted by: josh at Dec 11, 2006 9:08:56 AM
I *highly* recommend Richard Mayberry's "What Ever Happened to Penny Candy?" I also recommend the other books in his series. These books are great even for older students, but they're perfect for a straight-forward, easy to understand approach on economics.
Posted by: Brian at Dec 11, 2006 9:14:53 AM
My own kids learned about incentives for all sorts of things in their daily lives. But I would also recommend "I Pencil" which in fairly simple terms explains market coordination.
Posted by: drtaxsacto at Dec 11, 2006 9:19:35 AM
You might want to check out "What do People do All Day?" by Richard Scarry. Economics is about how resources are allocated, so this might be a good starting point for understanding how people use their time.
Posted by: Santosh Anagol at Dec 11, 2006 9:25:06 AM
I think Russ Roberts over @ CafeHayek did a podcast with a woman who was teaching Economics to young students, probably about 8 years of age. You might surf over to his list of podcasts @ econlib.org and see if you can find it. It was one of his first podcasts, IIRC.
Posted by: Michael Stack at Dec 11, 2006 9:26:45 AM
I haven't seen the Ducktales episode, but from what people said above, I think you mean "The Land of Tra-La-La". The synopsis from the wikipedia page:
Scrooge is faced with an unnatural ailment, werein he loses his senses whenever anybody talks of any money related issues. His doctor suggests others to take him to 'The Land of Tra-La-La' where apparently there is no money being used as such. They go there, but when Fenton realizes that he would be of no use in such a place, he somehow gets the people to start transactions with bottle-caps being used for money. Based on the Carl Barks story Tralla La.
Posted by: Aaron at Dec 11, 2006 9:28:25 AM
Whatever you do, stay away from the Barbar the Elephant stories. When Barbar
modernizes his kingdom, he establishes two bureaus, one for production - the Bureau of
Industry, and one for consumption - the Bureau of Culture.
Posted by: Acad Ronin at Dec 11, 2006 9:35:54 AM
Any of the books by Laura Joffe Numeroff and Felicia Bond, such as "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." Great for teaching the law of unintended consequences.
Posted by: Ted Craig at Dec 11, 2006 9:43:25 AM
Atlas Shrugged is a good 3rd grade read. She could probably digest it over her week-long winter break.
Posted by: Alex at Dec 11, 2006 9:47:43 AM
While not a book, I recommend the computer game Rollercoaster Tycoon.
Here is a site with a list of libertarian children's books:
http://www.boogieonline.com/revolution/community/educate/books/children.html
Posted by: subrosa at Dec 11, 2006 10:00:56 AM
One of my favourite books as a child (1st grade) was The Toothpaste Millionaire, by Jean Merrill. Nicely simple treatment of microeconomic issues like production costs, economies of scale, the ability of large businesses to undercut small ones, etc. I should go back and reread it, it's been decades since the last time....
Posted by: Michelle at Dec 11, 2006 10:04:51 AM
I would suggest I, Pencil by Leonard Read which could spark some really good conversation and get a child wondering about the market process. As a child the 2 things that prompted the most wonder was the expansiveness of the universe and how the market could bring me bananas from Brazil.
Posted by: Tom at Dec 11, 2006 10:12:41 AM
Children like fantasy, so perhaps start her with The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money? It's not that much harder to read than The Silmarillion, and while it has fewer elves, the magic powers ascribed to the government make for an enchanting fairy tale.
Posted by: eddie at Dec 11, 2006 10:17:12 AM
Maybe you can find something here.
This may be the best place to start...
Posted by: Michael Greinecker at Dec 11, 2006 10:22:40 AM
The New York Fed publishes a series of witty (and free!) comic books on economic topics.
My kids really liked The Story of Money and A Penny Saved. Now there are maybe a dozen
comics available, and I'm going to order a bunch of the rest.
You can see them all at http://www.ny.frb.org/publications/result.cfm?comics=1
Posted by: Dan Akst at Dec 11, 2006 10:39:28 AM
Let her play Runescape or a similar online mutliplayer game. For my now twelve year old son, the game has devolved into a quest for "GP" (I think it's an acronym for gold pieces) the currency of Runescape. He has learned how to acquire vast sums of GP by "merchanting" within the game and trading valuable virtual items outside the game. We frequently have discussions about game changes that have resulted in inflationary and deflationary pressures on different classes of commodities.
Posted by: Trey at Dec 11, 2006 10:45:11 AM
"you see, the cowardly lion is Williams Jennings Bryan..."
Posted by: david at Dec 11, 2006 10:45:51 AM
