1 Cooperation and conflict within couples: The gendered distribution of entitlement to household income ESPE Conference, Seville June 2009 Jérôme De Henau and Susan Himmelweit

2 Motivation Entitlements: legitimate command over resources that give rise to opportunities (Sen) Indicator of autonomy (current or future) Cooperative-conflict model: Cooperation to increase household resources but still can be conflict of interest about division of resources  Identifying determinants of entitlements  Capturing gendered effects

3 Change in male and female answers to satisfaction with household income Man loses his job  both dissatisfied Woman loses her job  both dissatisfied too but less, and man less than woman Young child  woman more dissatisfied than man

4 Why such gender differences? Different personality traits and attitudes to change Different valuation of money (trade-off with other domains such as leisure, social life) Different entitlements, access to underlying resources and burden of costs because of different –Fall-back positions in case cooperation breaks down –Perceived contributions (what each member brings into the household and how it is valued) –Perceptions of interest (e.g. individualistic versus family-based) These aspects can be gendered (influence of gender norms)

5 Our model Satisfaction is influenced by entitlements and other factors –Household entitlements (result of cooperation) –Relative entitlements (division of fruits of household cooperation) Entitlements (both elements) are influenced by –Current and future resources and contributions –Individual elements have different impact according to gender Our aim: disentangling gendered and non-gendered determinants of household and relative entitlements

6 Our model specification Linear framework (with ordered benchmark for comparison) Variables influence both partner’s satisfaction in the same direction on average: average scores of satisfaction as dep. var. (indicating impact on household entitlements) Variables influence one partner’s satisfaction and the other in opposite directions: difference in scores of satisfaction as dep. var. (indicating impact on relative entitlements)

7 Our model specification (2) Sample: working age couples with or without children Use of BHPS in its panel form to strip out effects of unobserved time-invariant factors (such as personality traits) – Hausman specification test rejects RE Control for overall satisfaction with life (to focus on financial aspects of entitlements and avoid trade-offs between different domains) Examples of explanatory variables are income level, income source, employment status, earning share, potential wage, housework time and presence of young children

8 Gendered pattern Factors that affect entitlements may do so in symmetric and gendered ways for both cooperation and conflict Cooperation can be achieved by partners adopting roles that are partially symmetric and partially gendered: –e.g. valuing both partners’ employment but putting more weight on the man's than the woman’s Similarly for the conflictual element –e.g. if being the higher earner gives either greater entitlement but has more effect for one sex than the other

9 Results

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11 Cooperative aspects of entitlements Variables that affect this: Household level: –Household income (+), unequal earnings (+), investment income (+), House ownership (+), Children aged 0-4 (-) Individual level (symmetric): –human capital (+), full-time employment (+), poor health (-), housework hours (-) Individual level (gendered): –woman higher earner(+), man unemployed (-), man long-term disabled (­)

12 Conflictual aspects of entitlements Household level: –Household receives transfer income (woman +/man -) –Children aged 0-4 (woman -/man +) Individual level (symmetric): –Full-time employment (+); Unemployment and disability (-) poor health (-); Hours of housework (-) Individual level (gendered): –Higher earner (+ for woman)

13 Reflections Source of contributions and gender of position matter  challenge to income pooling and unitary models Not only division of current resources matters –future autonomy/security is also reflected in partners’ assessment of their current situation Importance of accounting for gender effects: –Direct and indirect gender effects (gendered distribution of characteristics such as employment, earnings, caring responsibilities, etc.) –perceptions matter  need to explore gender norms outside hh

14 Conclusion Simple model that can easily be reproduced in other countries and with additional explanatory factors (e.g. external factors and gender norms) Extension to other domains of entitlement (such as time and social life) Refining Sen’s model by accounting for interdependence and relational aspects of care (see Lewis and Giullari 2005)