Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-04T11:37:22.843Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Employment and the distribution of intra-household financial satisfaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Jaslin K Kalsi ,
Siobhan Austen  and
Astghik Mavisakalyan
Jaslin K Kalsi*
Affiliation:
School of Economics and Finance, Curtin University, WA, Australia
Siobhan Austen
Affiliation:
School of Economics and Finance, Curtin University, WA, Australia
Astghik Mavisakalyan
Affiliation:
Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, Curtin University, WA, Australia
*
Jaslin Kalsi, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley, WA 6102, Australia. Email: jaslin.kalsi@curtin.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study applies a methodology used by De Henau and Himmelweit (2013) to study resource allocation in Australian mixed-sex couple households. Using 18 waves of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey and by means of fixed effects estimations, the study identifies how men’s and women’s contributions via paid and unpaid work influences their satisfaction with the financial situation (SWFS) within households. Employment status is used to proxy each partner’s contribution to household resources. The results reveal that paid contributions through full-time employment have a strong role in determining SWFS. This is a source of gender difference because Australian men are much more likely to be engaged in full-time employment than women. Most often, for both men and women, unpaid contributions to household resources (proxied by less than full-time employment) has a detrimental effect on their own SWFS, but smaller effects on their partner’s SWFS. These results imply that gender asymmetry in paid and unpaid contributions to household resources contributes to the reproduction of gender inequalities within Australian households. The results add external validity to the relevance of De Henau and Himmelweit’s (2013) analysis of these issues.

Keywords

Employmenthousehold economicsgender analysisintra-householdfinancial satisfactionB54I31E24
Type
Gender, power and work
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 329 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agarwal, B (1997) “'Bargaining” and gender relations: within and beyond the household. Feminist Economics 3(1): 1–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahn, N, Ateca-amestoy, V, Ugidos, A (2014) Financial satisfaction from an intra-household perspective. Journal of Happiness Studies 15(5): 1109–1123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alessie, R, Crossley, T, Hildebrand, V (2006) Estimating a Collective Household Model with Survey Data on Financial Satisfaction (IFS Working Paper 06/19). London: UK Institute for Fiscal Studies.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anxo, D, Boulin, J, Fagan, C (2006) Decent working time in a life-course perspective. In: Boulin, J, Lallement, M, Messenger, J (eds) Decent Working Time: New Trends, New Issues. Geneva, Switzerland: International Labor Organization, pp. 93–122.Google Scholar
Apps, PF, Rees, R (1988) Taxation and the household. Journal of Public Economics 35(3): 355–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austen, S (2017) Report on the Effects of Parenthood and Other Care Roles on Men’s and Women’s Labour Force Participation and Experiences of Paid Work. Perth, WA: Women in Social Economic Research (WiSER).Google Scholar
Becker, GS (1981) A Treatise on the Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bennett, F (2013) Researching within-household distribution: Overview, developments, debates, and methodological challenges. Journal of Marriage and Family 75(3): 582–597.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bianchi, SM, Milkie, MA (2010) Work and family research in the first decade of the 21st century. Journal of Marriage and Family 72(3): 705–725.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanchflower, DG, Oswald, AJ (2004) Wellbeing over time in Britain and the USA. Journal of Public Economics 88(7): 1359–1386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanchflower, DG, Oswald, AJ (2005) Happiness and the human development index: the paradox of Australia. The Australian Economic Review 38(3): 307–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonke, J (2008) Income distribution and financial satisfaction between spouses in Europe. The Journal of Socio-Economics 37(6): 2291–2303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonke, J, Browning, M (2009) The distribution of financial well-being and income within the household. Review of Economics of the Household 7(1): 31–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiappori, P-A (1988) Rational household labor supply. Econometrica 56(1): 63–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, AE (2018) Four decades of the economics of happiness: where next? Review of Income and Wealth 64(2): 245–269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craig, L, Mullan, K, Blaxland, M (2010) Parenthood, policy and work-family time in Australia 1992-2006. Work, Employment and Society 24(1): 27–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Henau, J, Himmelweit, S (2013) Unpacking within-household gender differences in partners’ subjective benefits from household income. Journal of Marriage and Family 75(3): 611–624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elsas, S (2016) Income sharing within households: evidence from data on financial satisfaction. Social Sciences 5(3): 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrer-i-Carbonell, A, Frijters, P (2004) How important is methodology for the estimates of the determinants of happiness? Economic Journal 114(479): 641–659.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedberg, L, Webb, A (2006) Determinants and Consequences of Bargaining Power in Households. Working Paper 13-2006. Boston College: Center for Retirement Research. Available at: https://crr.bc.edu/working-papers/determinants-and-consequences-of-bargaining-power-in-households/ (accessed 26 July 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedemann-Sánchez, G (2008) Assets in intra-household bargaining among women workers in Columbia’s cut-flower industry. Feminist Economics 12(1): 247–269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardner, J, Oswald, AJ (2001) Does Money Buy Happiness? A Longitudinal Study Using Data on Windfalls. Coventry, UK: Warwick University. Available at: https://users.nber.org/∼confer/2001/midmf01/oswald.pdf (accessed 26 July 2021).Google Scholar
Headey, B, Wooden, M (2004) The effects of wealth and income on subjective wellbeing and ill-being. Economic Record 80(s1): 24–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Himmelweit, S (2001) Decision making in households. In: Himmelweit, S, Simonetti, R, Trigg, A (eds) Microeconomics: Neoclassical and Institutionalist Perspectives on Economic Behaviour. London, UK: Thomson Learning, 143–177.Google Scholar
Iversen, V (2003) Intra-household inequality: a challenge for the capability approach? Feminist Economics 9(2): 93–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kabeer, N (1997) Women, wages and intra-household power relations in urban Bangladesh. Development and Change 28(2): 261–302.Google Scholar
Kalb, G (2018) Paid parental leave and female labour supply: a review. Economic Record 94(304): 80–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kristoffersen, I (2010) The metrics of subjective wellbeing: cardinality, neutrality and additivity. Economic Record 86(272): 98–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lundberg, SJ, Pollak, RA, Wales, TJ (1997) Do husbands and wives pool their resources? Evidence from the United Kingdom child benefit. The Journal of Human Resources 32(3): 463–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markusen, A (1981) City spatial structure, women’s household work, and national urban policy. In: Stimpson, C, Dixler, E, Nelson, M, et al. (eds) Women and the American City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 20–41.Google Scholar
Mysíková, M (2016) Within-couple financial satisfaction in the Czech Republic: a test of income pooling hypothesis. Ekonomický časopis/Journal of Economics 64(4): 301–316.Google Scholar
Noonan, MC (2001) The impact of domestic work on men’s and women’s wages. Journal of Marriage and Family 63(4): 1134–1145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyman, C, Dema, S (2007) An overview: research on couples and money. In: Stocks, J, Diaz, C, Hallerod, B (eds) Modern Couples Sharing Money, Sharing Life. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 7–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD] (2020) OECD Labour Force Statistics 2020. Paris: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Pollak, R (2005) Bargaining Power in Marriage: Earnings, Wage Rates and Household Production (Technical Report). NBER Working Papers 11239. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Potuchek, JL (1997) Who Supports the Family?: Gender and Breadwinning in Dual-Earner Marriages. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purkayastha, D (2003) From Parents to Children: Intra-household Altruism as Institutional behavior. Journal of Economic Issues 37(3): 601–619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, A (1990) Gender and cooperative conflicts. In: Tinker, I (ed) Persistent Inequalities. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 123–149.Google Scholar
Summerfield, M, Bright, S, Hahn, M, et al. (2019) HILDA User Manual –– Release 18. Melbourne, VIC: Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research.Google Scholar
Sung, S, Bennett, F (2007) Dealing with money in low-to moderate-income couples: insights from individual interviews. Social Policy Review 19Analysis and Debate in Social Policy, 2007 19: 151–170.Google Scholar
Thomas, D (1990) Intra-household resource allocation: an inferential approach. The Journal of Human Resources 25(4): 635–664.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tiefenthaler, J (1999) The sectoral labor supply of married couples in Brazil: testing the unitary model of household behavior. Journal of Population Economics 12(4): 591–606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogler, C, Pahl, J (1993) Social and economic change and the organisation of money within marriage. Work, Employment & Society 7(1): 71–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Kalsi et al. supplementary material
Download undefined(File)
File 467.6 KB