Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T18:27:21.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sex, Sharing and the Distribution of Income*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Hugh Davies  and
Heather Joshi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It is customary to assume that income is redistributed between the sexes within the family. This article investigates alternative assumptions about sharing within the family and their effects on the distribution of income. Using data from the UK Family Expenditure Survey for 1968 and 1986, we contrast two assumptions about sharing within the family; the conventional assumption of equal sharing or ‘pooling’, and an alternative of ‘minimum sharing’. Under each assumption, we examine the composition of extreme quintiles of the income distribution, and compute the numbers of men and women falling below an arbitrary ‘poverty line’. The contribution to inequality of the net transfers between the sexes and other sources of income is also examined. We estimate that resource transfers (other than for housing) between spouses could, if all income is pooled, account for about one third of married couples’ pooled incomes in 1986 and about 56 per cent of the inequality of married women's incomes (in 1968, 56 per cent and 50 per cent respectively). Taking the bottom quintile of pooled income as an arbitrary ‘poverty line’, we calculate that 15 per cent of married people would have been below this line in 1986 if all incomes were pooled. On the minimum sharing assumption, 52 per cent of married women, but only 11 per cent of married men would have been under the line.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , July 1994 , pp. 301 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Apps, P. F. and Rees, R. (1993), ‘Labor supply, household production and intra-family welfare distribution’, paper presented at European Society for Population Economics Conference, Budapest, June.Google Scholar
Atkinson, A. B. (1991). ‘Poverty statistics and progress in Europe’. Discussion Paper WSP/60, STICERD, London School of Economics.Google Scholar
Bourguignon, F. and Chiappori, P.-A. (1992), ‘Collective models of household behavior: an introduction’, European Economic Review, 36: 2/3, 355–64.Google Scholar
Brannen, J. and Wilson, G. (eds.), (1987), Give and Take in Families, Allen and Unwin, London.Google Scholar
Charles, N. and Kerr, M. (1987), ‘Just the way it is: gender and age differences in family food consumption’, in Brannen and Wilson, 155–74.Google Scholar
Cigno, A. (1991), The Economics of the Family, Clarendon Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Dale, A. and Joshi, H. (1992a), ‘The economic and social status of British women’, in Buttler, G., Heilig, G. and Schmidtt-Rink, G. (eds.), Acta Demographica, Physica Verlag, Heidelberg, 27–46.Google Scholar
Davies, H. and Joshi, H. (1992b), ‘Sex, sharing and the distribution of income’, Birkbeck College Discussion Papers in Economics. 9/92.Google Scholar
Dilnot, A. and Kell, M. (1989). ‘Male unemployment and women's work’, in Dilnot, A. and Walker, I. (eds.), The Economics of Social Security, Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Ermisch, J., Joshi, H. and Wright, R. E. (1991), ‘Women's wages in Great Britain’, in Willborn, S. (ed.), International Review of Comparative Public Policy, Vol 3, Women's Wages: Stability and Change in Six Industrialized Countries, 221–40.Google Scholar
Esam, P. and Berthoud, R. (1991), Independent Benefits for Men and Women, Policy Studies Institute, London.Google Scholar
Jenkins, S. (1991). ‘Poverty measurement and the within-household distribution: agenda for action’. Journal of Social Policy, 20: 4, 457–83.Google Scholar
Jenkins, S. (1992). ‘Accounting for inequality trends: decomposition analysis for the UK, 1971–1986’, paper presented at Royal Economic Society Conference, City University, March. Typescript, University College. Swansea.Google Scholar
Johnson, P. and Webb, S. (1989). ‘Counting people with low incomes: the impact of recent changes in official statistics’, Fiscal Studies, 10, 66–82.Google Scholar
Joshi, H. (1989). ‘The changing form of women's economic dependency’, in Joshi, H. (ed.), The Changing Population of Britain, Blackwell. Oxford, 157–76.Google Scholar
Joshi, H. and Davies, H. (1990), ‘Gender and income inequality in the UK: the feminization of earning or of poverty?’ Presentation to the 4th ESPE Annual Conference, Istanbul. Typescript, Birkbeck College, London.Google Scholar
Joshi, H. and Davies, H. (1991), ‘The pension consequences of divorce’, CEPR Discussion Paper 550. Centre for Economic Policy Research. London.Google Scholar
Joshi, H. and Hinde, P. R. A. (1991), ‘Employment after childbearing: cohort study evidence’, NCDS Discussion Paper 35, Social Statistics Research Unit, City University.Google Scholar
Mookherjee, D. and Shorrocks, A. (1982), ‘A decomposition analysis of the trend in UK income inequality’. Economic Journal, 92 (12), 886–902.Google Scholar
Morris, L. and Ruane, S. (1989). Household Finance Management and the Labour Market, Avebury, Aldershot.Google Scholar
Morris, N. and Preston, I. (1986), ‘Inequality, poverty and the distribution of income’, Bulletin of Economic Research, 38: 4, 277–344.Google Scholar
Oppenheim, C. (1990), Poverty, the Facts, Child Poverty Action Group, London.Google Scholar
Pahl, J. (1989), Money and Marriage, Macmillan, Basingstoke and London.Google Scholar
Roll, J. (1991), What is a Family? Benefit Models and Social Realities, Family Policy Studies Centre, London.Google Scholar
Shorrocks, A. F. (1980), ‘The class of additively decomposable inequality measures’, Econometrica, 48: 3, 613–25.Google Scholar
Shorrocks, A. F. (1982), ‘Inequality decomposition by factor components’, Econometrica, 50: 1, 193–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, S. (ed.) (1991). Economic Policy and the Division of Income within the Family, Institute for Fiscal Studies, London.Google Scholar
Townsend, P. (1979), Poverty in the United Kingdom: A Survey of Household Resources and Standards of Living, Pelican Books, London.Google Scholar
Vogler, C. (1989), ‘Labour market change and patterns of financial allocation within households’, ESRC Social Change and Economic Life Initiative Working Paper 12, Nuffleld College, Oxford.Google Scholar
Wilson, G. (1987), ‘Money: patterns of responsibility and irresponsibility in marriage’, in Brannen and Wilson (eds.), 136–.Google Scholar
Zabalza, A. and Tzannatos, Z. (1985), Women and Equal Pay: the Effects of Legislation on Female Employment and Wages in Britain, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar