Individual Wealth and Subjective Financial Well‐being in Marriage: Resource Integration or Separation?

Lersch, Philipp M.

doi:10.1111/jomf.12406

Cited by 29 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The increasing labor force participation of women and their increasing economic power relative to men's has triggered a renewed interest in the study of how economic resources are managed among couples (Bennett, ; Lersch, ; Lott, ; Pepin, ). The way couples control, manage, and use their economic resources is normally studied using measures of income pooling, indicating whether the partners keep separate or joint accounts, and which spouse has the main responsibility for certain household decisions (see, e.g., Lundberg & Pollak, ; Pahl, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nonetheless, the economic and sociological literature did not find evidence of a unified model of resource pooling, whereby spouses maximize a couple‐specific utility and share resources equally among them. Such literature have instead found support for the bargaining model (i.e., for the importance of one's own rational choice rather than for a couple‐based perspective; Bennett, ; Grossbard‐Shechtman, ; Lersch, ; Lundberg & Pollak, ; Pahl, ; Pollak, ).…”

Section: Why Choose the Community Of Property At Marriage?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gender Differences in Couples' Matrimonial Property Regime in Italy

Fraboni

Vitali

2019

J of Marriage and Family

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Objective This study investigates the characteristics of spouses in Italy who choose to pool their economic resources. Background If resource pooling is common among male‐breadwinner couples, expectations regarding resource pooling are mixed for female‐breadwinner couples or, more generally, for couples with wives who are economically advantaged when compared with their husbands. This study asks whether resource‐pooling strategies differ between couples with economically advantaged husbands, couples with economically advantaged wives, and couples in which spouses have similar economic resources. Method The article uses an objective measure of pooling of wealth available for Italy at the time of marriage: the matrimonial property regime, indicating the choice between a shared or separate ownership of assets accumulated during marriage. Using data from the 2015 marriage register, the article models the probability that a couple chooses the community of property with a logistic regression model. Results Couples with husbands who were economically advantaged when compared with their wives (i.e., the husband was older, more educated, or employed with a nonemployed wife) were more likely to choose the community of property when compared with couples with similar resources (both spouses were employed, of similar age or educational attainment); conversely, couples with economically advantaged wives were more likely to choose the separation of property. Conclusion Economically advantaged women seem to be “undoing gender” by protecting their economic resources via the separation of property.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Why Choose the Community Of Property At Marriage?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Differences in Couples' Matrimonial Property Regime in Italy

Fraboni

Vitali

2019

J of Marriage and Family

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“…Previous research in different European contexts has generally found that, after controlling for family income, women are more satisfied financially the more income they bring to the household (Alessie, Crossley, & Hildebrand, 2006; Bonke & Browning, 2009; Newman, Delaney, & Nolan, 2008). Also, Lersch (2017) recently showed that younger generations of German women and men are more satisfied with their personal wealth than with the wealth of their partners. On the contrary, Hajdu and Hajdu (2018) revealed in the Hungarian context that neither men nor women view the higher earning potential of women positively.…”

Section: Financial Well-being and Intra-household Sharingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manage Your Money, Be Satisfied? Money Management Practices and Financial Satisfaction of Couples Through the Lens of Gender

Kulić

Minello

Zella³

2019

Journal of Family Issues

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There is a difference between who brings in income, who spends and manages money, and who finally benefits. All these aspects are important in determining how satisfied spouses are with their individual financial situation. Relying on Swiss Household Panel (SHP) data from 2004 to 2013 (N = 1,810 couples), this assumption is tested by analyzing how women’s relative income and the management of economic resources within couples affect women’s and men’s financial satisfaction in the household. Results show that a change in the composition of total income in favor of women directly increases their financial satisfaction and net of household income, while men’s financial satisfaction increases up to the point at which women earn more than one third of the total income. Money management regimes serve as an important additional tool in creating and compensating for (dis) advantage between partners. The results are discussed in the context of traditional gender norms in the Swiss Society.

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“…Engels (1902) highlighted the role of private property in the creation of the modern family, arguing that monogamous marriages were invented to ensure the legitimate inheritance of family wealth. Today, many scholars implicitly or explicitly assume that husbands and wives pool their resources to maximize a joint utility function promoting mutual satisfaction and wellbeing (Becker, 1981;Bennett, 2013;Lersch, 2017).…”

Section: Different Partnership Institutions Different Financial Pracmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Marriage–Cohabitation Gap in Income Pooling: Evidence from 29 European Countries

Präg¹,

Begall²,

Treas³

2019

Preprint

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Pooling all incomes was long seen as the norm in male-breadwinner marriages, but in a time of dual-earner families, cohabitation, and divorce, the underpinnings of this model are eroding. What consequences does this have for income pooling? We compare ca. 130,000 married and cohabiting couples from 29 European countries in the 2010 European Union Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) via random effects logit models. We show that cohabiting couples are generally more likely than married couples to keep at least some income separately, the so-called cohabitation gap. Roughly a fifth of this gap we can attribute to compositional differences between married and cohabiting couples. Further, the cohabiting group is heterogeneous and smaller when comparing only couples with children or only couples with a long relationship duration. Lastly, we show that there is substantial variation in the size of the cohabitation gap across countries. The size of this gap varies with the country-specific cohabitation rate, divorce rate, and female labor force participation rate. While there is considerable heterogeneity among cohabiting couples, married and cohabiting couples remain distinct in their resource-sharing behavior. Income pooling does not become more comparable when cohabitation, marital instability, and women’s economic independence become more widespread in the broader society. Our study reconciles disparate findings of previous cross-national research on the cohabitation gap.

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Individual Wealth and Subjective Financial Well‐being in Marriage: Resource Integration or Separation?

Cited by 29 publications

References 26 publications

Gender Differences in Couples' Matrimonial Property Regime in Italy

Gender Differences in Couples' Matrimonial Property Regime in Italy

Manage Your Money, Be Satisfied? Money Management Practices and Financial Satisfaction of Couples Through the Lens of Gender

Understanding the Marriage–Cohabitation Gap in Income Pooling: Evidence from 29 European Countries

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