Income Sharing within Households: Evidence from Data on Financial Satisfaction

Abstract

This paper contributes to the understanding of gender aspects in the intra-household sharing of income. I estimate models of differences in financial satisfaction between household partners using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, which allows one to account for household-level fixed effects. The paper adds to the literature a further convincing rejection of the equal sharing hypothesis. What is more and novel, the results imply that unequal income sharing is asymmetric and triggered by the relative employment statuses of the partners: in male breadwinner households, the women’s well-being is affected by the distribution factor; in double full-time couples, it is the man’s well-being.

Keywords

• income pooling
• subjective well-being
• male breadwinner
• gender breadwinning norms