Reid, Margaret G.

YEARS IN THE DEPARTMENT:

1948-1951

RESEARCH INTEREST:

Household Production

BIOSKETCH:

Margaret Gilpin Reid was born on a farm near Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1896. Her early education prepared her to become a schoolteacher, and she taught in rural schools in Canada until 1916. That year, she enrolled in a new degree program specializing in home economics at the Manitoba Agricultural College. Instead of returning to high school teaching like many of her fellow students, Reid launched her academic career in 1921 once she graduated from the program.

Dr. Reid taught as a lecturer in home management at the Ontario Agricultural College from 1921 to 1927, when she enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of Chicago. Working under renowned economist Hazel Kyrk, Reid submitted her dissertation entitled “The Economics of The Household” in 1931. This paper became the basis for her expanded book on the subject, titled “The Economics of Household Production,” which quickly became one of the pioneering texts on the subject.

The outbreak of the Second World War interrupted her academic career in the 1940s. Like many economists, she served for several government agencies during this period. From 1943 to 1944, she worked as an economist in the Division of Statistical Standards in the Executive Office of the President, and from 1945 to 1948, she served as the head of the Family Economics Division of the Department of Agriculture.

Dr. Reid then joined the University of Illinois in 1948, but left just three years later due to the events surrounding Dean Howard Bowen. Bowen hired many economists like Reid whose liberal political and economic beliefs clashed sharply with the existing conservative faculty. The established faculty members ended up removing Bowen as dean in 1951, causing many of his recent hires, such as Reid, to leave the University.

Reid ended up back at the University of Chicago in 1951, where she would stay until her retirement in 1961. She continued to work on a book describing the relationship between health and income until the late 1980s, but ultimately never completed it. Nobel Prize winners Franco Modigliani and Milton Friedman cited her work as influences in their later research. Margaret Reid was deceased in 1991 at the age of 96.

PHD:

University of Chicago, 1931

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Reid, Margaret G. Housing and Income. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. Print.
Reid, Margaret G. Status of Town and Village Housing in Iowa. Ames, Iowa: Agricultural Experiment Station, Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, 1935. Print.
Reid, Margaret G. Consumers and the Market. New York: F.S. Crofts & Co, 1942. Print.
Reid, Margaret G. Food for People. New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1943. Print.
Reid, Margaret G. Economics of Household Production. New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1934. Print.

VITA: