Inflation and the Family

Jeffrey Degner brings monetary economics to a subject economists rarely touch: the family. Surveying the global retreat from marriage and childbearing, he notes that the standard explanations — job instability, financialization, rising inequality, weakened contracts — all point back to inflationary monetary policy. Drawing on his book Inflation and the Family, he traces how persistent money growth builds an "inflation culture" of debt, short-termism, and Cantillon-effect inequality, then extends the analysis to fiscal and regulatory intervention. His conclusion: all intervention is family intervention, and civil society cannot be restored by the state that eroded it.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 22, 2026.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.