The allocation of money in couples: the end of inequality?

ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH: Research conducted in the 1980s and early 1990s showed considerable inequalities within male-female couples as concerns financial arrangements and access to personal spending money. This paper provides an analysis of the allocation of money in German couples that goes beyond pre...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Zeitschrift für Soziologie 2006-06, Vol.35 (3), p.212-226
Main Authors: Ludwig-Mayerhofer, Wolfgang, Gartner, Hermann, Allmendinger, Jutta
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Couples
Data analysis
Empirical research
Federal Republic of Germany
Gender differentiation
Germany
Household expenditure
Income Inequality
Inequality
Low income
Measurement
Money
Partners
Sexual Inequality
Social Welfare
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Summary:ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH: Research conducted in the 1980s and early 1990s showed considerable inequalities within male-female couples as concerns financial arrangements and access to personal spending money. This paper provides an analysis of the allocation of money in German couples that goes beyond previous research in two respects. First, data are used that permit direct, albeit only rough, assessments of the amount of personal spending money available to each of the partners. Second, it is therefore possible to investigate in some detail the factors that may influence the availability of personal spending money and thus also the possible differences between the woman and the man concerning the amount of money available to each of them. The empirical analysis is based on the German Low Income Panel (NIedrig-Einkommens-Panel, NIEP), a panel study representative of households with an income lower than about 1.5 times the German social assistance rate in 1999, the year of the first wave. We use the fourth wave of the NIEP, in which questions about couples' money management were added to the questionnaire. The data refer to those 718 households that consisted of an adult couple, with or without children. While not all couples allocate the same amount of money to each partner, there is no difference in the proportion of men and women who have more money at their disposal than their partners. A number of hypotheses are tested concerning the amount of money allocated to individual partners, and the effects are basically the same for men and women. Investigation of the effects on the within-couple differences in personal spending money shows that the balance shifts in favor of the male partner if his education is superior to that of the female partner. This holds specifically for couples with very low incomes. // ABSTRACT IN GERMAN: Untersuchungen in den 1980er und frühen 1990er Jahren haben gezeigt, dass innerhalb von Paarbeziehungen eine beträchtliche Ungleichheit der Geldarrangements und beim Zugang zu Geld für persönliche Ausgaben besteht. Die hier vorgelegten Analysen der Allokation von Geld in Paarbeziehungen gehen in zweierlei Hinsicht über die bisherigen Untersuchungen hinaus: Erstens erlauben die hier verwendeten Daten eine direkte, wenn auch grobe, Einschätzung des Geldbetrages, der jedem Partner für die persönlichen Ausgaben zur Verfügung steht. Zweitens können wir detailliert die Faktoren bestimmen, die die Verfügung über Geld für persönliche Ausgaben un
ISSN:0340-1804