Welcome to Econ Talk, coming to you from the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts of George Mason University.

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My guest today is Don Cox, a professor of economics at Boston College.

We'll be talking about the economics of the family. Don, it's good to have you here again on Econ Talk.

Thanks, Russell.

So, Don, I've been thinking about the following puzzle. It doesn't seem at first to have much to do with economics, but I wanted to share it with you.

Let's suppose, and because I hope it does have something to do with economics, ultimately, here's the puzzle.

You're a parent of, let's say, a parent of, let's consider a parent of two children.

Okay.

And the parent's getting old, the dad, let's say, is realizing he's getting old, he's going to die soon.

And he wants to make sure his will is in place, and everything's okay.

So, he takes his will, and he looks at it, and he realizes that one of his kids is financially extremely successful.

The other ones struggles and doesn't do very well.

Now, he thinks, well, you know, if I split the money equally, that would seem to be a logical thing.

A lot of people think, yeah, sharing, sharing is good, equal, egalitarianism.

But maybe I should help out this poor, the poor brother, the brother who's been struggling financially, because the rich brother's got so much already.

So, I'm not going to split it equally, I'm going to give more to the poor brother.

But he thinks to himself, you know, two things.

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