Economics, Supply And Demand Essay, Research Paper
In the article we find that teenagers have the oppertunity to be demanding about their salary in the baby sitting field, because the amount of babysitters today are scarce. The babysitting population, teenagers, find themselves busy with school, part time jobs, and extracirricular activity. Teenagers with drivers licenses are even more scarce than those with out, all in all, It’s hard to find a babysitter. Times have changed, just twenty years ago there were 33 million children who needed to be watched, and 39 million babysitters(age 10 – 19), recent polls suggest that children that need to be watched raised 18 percent to 39 million while baby sitters dropped 5 percent to 37 million. The rise in children coupled with American families spending more time out then years ago, has allowed the babysitters to set their price with out haggeling. Baby sitters are making well over the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour because they are in demand, and scarce; the babysitters who train in CPR, serve dinner, and drive are the hardest to come by and can demand the highest wages.
In this article we see many examples of supply and damand and the powers of supply and demand. Babysitters are in demand, there is an increase in the amount of children who need to be watched yet there are relativly few who choose to babysit from the allready decreased amount of the babysitter work force. This gives the babysitter the advantage of a noncompetitive work force, allowing the baby sitter to set the price with out bargaining. If we were to compare two different production possibility frontiers, we would see a left shift of the curve while demand for baby sitters rises, from 1980 to 1996. In economics we concider this an inflation, the amount of resources(babysitters) decreased while the demand for them rose. This is what we would concider the begining of an econic problem because the resources are scarce. This resulted in an increase of price for that service.
We also see that the most experienced, oldest, responcible, and best trained babysitters set the highest prices by up to 60% from a “novice” sallery of $4 to a “expert” sallery of $10 and consumers are willing to pay. A consumer is willing to pay that extra $6 an hour for the piece of mind they get when they go out and know that their children are being attending to in the best possible way, much like a consumer is willing to by name brand products for a higher price because they just “feel” like its better. In the next two or three years the work force of the babysitters will grow, and so will the number of people under the age of 10, this will show a steady PPC with no signs of relief for the consumer.
This article shows the power of supply and demand. 20 years ago when children under the age of 10 and baby sitters age 10-19 were both fewer, we saw more competition between the baby sitters resulting in price decreases. Today with fewer baby sitters, all with busy scheduals, and more young children we see the damand increase resulting in an increase of price.