Review of Economics of the Household

, Volume 7, Issue 1, pp 31–42 | Cite as

The distribution of financial well-being and income within the household

Article
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Abstract

In this paper we consider the issue of the intra-household distribution of welfare directly using a survey measure of self-perceived economic well-being. We develop a theoretical model of satisfaction within the household for couples. In the empirical analysis we find that husbands and wives often report different levels of financial satisfaction. The most important correlate of relative satisfaction within the household is found to be relative income. This is a direct confirmation of the previously implicit findings and is predicted by our theoretical model.

Keywords

Relative income Well-being Happiness Intra-household allocation Unitary models 

JEL Classifications

D13 D60 D63 I31 
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Notes

Acknowledgement

Browning thanks the Danish National Research Foundation for support through its grant to the Centre for Applied Microeconometrics (CAM). We thank two editors and two referees and participants at the Paradoxes of Happiness within Economics conference, Milan, March 2003, for comments.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Rockwool Foundation Research UnitCopenhagenDenmark
  2. 2.Department of EconomicsUniversity of OxfordOxfordEngland

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