Economic Dependency

Economic dependency refers to reliance on other people, institutions, or countries for income, resources, and the means of survival. At the individual level it includes the dependence of children, older people, and partners on earners or on state support, and it is closely tied to gender and family relations. Charlotte Perkins Gilman argued that women’s economic dependence on husbands shaped marriage and character, Heidi Hartmann linked it to patriarchal structures, and Gosta Esping-Andersen introduced the idea of decommodification and the role of welfare states in reducing dependence on the market. Peter Townsend described structured dependency among older people created by retirement policy, and Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon traced the changing and stigmatizing meaning of dependency in welfare debates. At the international level, dependency theorists such as Andre Gunder Frank, Raul Prebisch, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso argued that poorer countries are bound to richer ones through trade, investment, and debt. Karl Marx described how workers depend on selling labor to survive. Critics note that dependency is often moralized, ignoring interdependence and unpaid care. Economic dependency remains central to research on gender, welfare, aging, development, and inequality.