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Family Financial Management and Individual Deprivation

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Abstract

A core assumption in conventional poverty measurement is that household members share equally in total household income. This paper focuses on heterosexual couple households and asks to what extent male and female partners may derive different benefits from total couple resources. Drawing on the 2010 Irish Survey on Income and Living Conditions module, we examined the couple financial regime, by which we mean which partners received income, whether the income was from work, the extent to which income was contributed for the benefit of other household members and responsibility for decision-making. We explored whether the couple’s financial regime was associated with different living standard outcomes for the partners. Among the findings was the beneficial impact of having income from work and of shared responsibility for decision-making. The paper concludes by pointing to some implications for our understanding of power and bargaining in couples.

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Notes

  1. This paper draws on the output of a research programme for the Analysis and Measurement of Poverty and Social Exclusion funded by Ireland’s Department of Social Protection under the National Action Plan for Social Inclusion 2007–2016 (Office for Social Inclusion 2007).

  2. Across the items, the partners give matching responses in nearly nine out of ten cases (Watson et al. 2013).

  3. There may have been differences between partners in responses on heating where, for example, someone at home during the day might do without heating but heating is turned on in the evening when others are at home.

  4. The Cronbach’s alpha for the items, assessed based on tetrachoric correlation coefficients was 0.79 (and 0.50 if assessed using Pearson correlation coefficients).

  5. The model is based on weighted data with robust standard errors, using Stata’s “svy” routine. The model-estimated results are average marginal effects (AME) calculated using Stata’s “margins” command (Williams 2012).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. GCU, Glasgow, UK

    Sara Cantillon

  2. ESRI, Dublin, Ireland

    Bertrand Maître & Dorothy Watson

Authors
  1. Sara Cantillon
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  2. Bertrand Maître
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  3. Dorothy Watson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sara Cantillon.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 6.

Table 6 Model of individual deprivation in couples (odds ratios versus neither deprived)
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Cantillon, S., Maître, B. & Watson, D. Family Financial Management and Individual Deprivation. J Fam Econ Iss 37, 461–473 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-015-9466-z

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