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We use a unique dataset from Italy to investigate the impact of socioeconomic characteristics and social capital on family wellbeing and satisfaction. We assess wellbeing using four dimensions of satisfaction with family life: satisfaction with decision making processes, with relationships with partner and children, and with time spent with children. Social capital is measured through information about membership in organizations, trust, and interactions with others. We find that while socioeconomic characteristics and equivalent income in general do not have an impact on family wellbeing, social capital matters for family life satisfaction.

We investigate the relationship between the individual and household indirect utility functions in the context of a collective household model. Our analysis produces new results that explain how the rule governing the distribution of resources among household members is related to the measurement of household welfare and intra-household inequality. We show that in a collective model of private consumption, income shares are equal to the product of two weights: the Pareto weight and a distribution weight reflecting income effects across individuals. For a weighted Bergsonian representation of household utility and general assumptions about individual preferences, we derive the associated household welfare functions and intra-household inequality measures belonging to a family of entropy indexes. We illustrate our findings with an empirical application that estimates a collective demand system to recover associated individual and household welfare functions along with the measures of intra-household inequality. This is the first application that estimates the Pareto weight and examines its role within a measure of income dispersion among household members.We are grateful to Rolf Aaberge, Ugo Colombino, Stefan Hoderlein, Eleonora Matteazzi, Lars Nesheim, various seminar and conference participants, the editor, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Nicola Tommasi for excellent research assistance. All errors and omissions are the sole responsibility of the authors.