23 Facts About Hazel Kyrk

Hazel Kyrk was an American economist and pioneer of consumer economics.

Hazel Kyrk was born in 1886 in Ashley, Ohio and was the only child of Elmer Kyrk, a drayman, and Jane Kyrk, a homemaker.

Hazel Kyrk attended Ohio Wesleyan University from 1904 to 1906.

Hazel Kyrk moved as well to continue her studies at university.

Hazel Kyrk resumed the work on her doctoral dissertation and employment with Oberlin College after the war had ended.

Hazel Kyrk's dissertation was published 1923 under the title A Theory of Consumption.

Hazel Kyrk fused the emerging field of social psychology with economics and analyzed the impact of regulated consumption in wartime England.

Hazel Kyrk broadened the economics curriculum to include consumer, consumption and consumer choice topics.

Hazel Kyrk served on the board of the Chicago Women's Trade Union League.

Hazel Kyrk served as principal economist in the United States Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Home Economics between 1938 and 1941.

Hazel Kyrk contributed to the Consumer Purchase Study, the bureau's comprehensive consumer survey.

In 1943 Hazel Kyrk was appointed as chair of the Consumer Advisory Committee to the Office of Price Administration.

Hazel Kyrk argued for better standards in consumer goods and urged a slower rate of price decontrol during World War II.

Between 1945 and 1946 Hazel Kyrk chaired the technical advisory committee for the Bureau of Labor Statistics and formulated a "standard family budget" as economic indicator to measure the economic health of US families.

In 1952 Hazel Kyrk retired from the University of Chicago and moved to Washington DC She finished writing and published the textbook The Family in the American Economy.

Hazel Kyrk maintained that changes in these norms impact on consumption.

Hazel Kyrk concluded that marginal utility theory could not adequately explain consumption and developed an instrumental rational choice theory.

In Economic Problems of the Family Hazel Kyrk considered the work of homemakers.

Hazel Kyrk estimated that in 1930 there were approximately 49 million people in the United States with a "gainful occupation" and about 25.5 million homemakers.

Hazel Kyrk tried to define household production, arguing that the conspicuous consumption Thorstein Veblen had identified in upper-class households was not productive.

Hazel Kyrk critiqued household production, arguing that it could not be efficient in a business sense, given the fixed overhead costs and the dispersion of tasks in a typical homemaker's day.

Hazel Kyrk argued that specialized machinery and labor that could be utilized to full capacity under centralized management would lead to gradual shift away from household production.

Hazel Kyrk maintained that household production was the result of societal norms and not clearly distinguishable from consumption.