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Do couples share income? Variation in the organisation of income in dual‐earner households
Author(s) -
Gray Edith,
Evans Ann
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
australian journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.417
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1839-4655
pISSN - 0157-6321
DOI - 10.1002/j.1839-4655.2008.tb00112.x
Subject(s) - cohabitation , dual (grammatical number) , demographic economics , project commissioning , variation (astronomy) , institution , household income , survey data collection , marital status , labour economics , economics , publishing , sociology , demography , geography , political science , social science , art , population , statistics , physics , literature , mathematics , archaeology , astrophysics , law
This paper examines the organisation of income of cohabiting and married dual‐income couples. This topic has gained significance as women increase their participation in the labour force, and increasingly bring additional money into the household. Given the increase in cohabitation, researchers have proposed that financial arrangements may differ according to relationship type. We model the effect of relationship type and previous relationship experience using data from a nationally‐representative survey from Australia. The effect of other factors related to the individual and household, such as length of relationship, educational background, home ownership and presence of children, is also explored. We find income organisation varies by whether the person is legally married or cohabiting, which we attribute to the institution of marriage.