Implications of Family Institution in Islam for Solving Easterly's Mystery (Lack of Correlation between the Feeling of Prosperity and the Production Per Capita amongCountries)

According to Easterly, the prosperity and comfort of a nation do not depend entirely on their per capita production. One of the views expressed in solving this mystery is the role of non-material goods in bringing the prosperity, which the family institution plays a key role in the production of these goods. The family is not only a place of the consumption of goods and services, and the supplier of factors of production, such as labor and capital, but also the producer of a variety of immaterial goods, such as emotional support that increases the prosperity or is the basis for it. Islam is one of the most comprehensive thoughts that views the family as the producer of nonmaterial goods. The family in Islam is a sacred institution with many functions, the most important of which is helping human to reach perfection. The present paper shows that the ideal Islamic family consisting of couples and children as the hardware and teachings of Islam as software, enjoying pleasures and satisfaction from reaching their various desires, firstly, obtains comfort and, secondly, provides the necessary field for reaching human perfection. Thus, the destruction of the family institution creates the grounds for reducing satisfaction and not achieving human perfection even with increasing income.