Beliefs About Money in Families: Balancing Unity, Autonomy, and Gender Equality

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12554
• Published date: 01 April 2019
• Date: 01 April 2019
• Author: Joanna R. Pepin

J R. P University of Texas–Austin

Beliefs About Money in Families: Balancing Unity,

Autonomy, and Gender Equality

Objective: This study provides the rst nation-

ally representative data on U.S. adults’ percep-

tions of income sharing within families.

Background: Modern couples confront tensions

between ideals of mutual interests and values

of economic autonomy, a departure from t-

ting themselves into culturally expected family

arrangements of the past. This study teases apart

the conditions under which people might priori-

tize one cultural value over another.

Method: The author conducted a nationally rep-

resentative survey experiment (N=3,986 indi-

viduals). The respondents selected an income

allocation arrangement for a ctional couple

with varied relationships investments (i.e., mar-

riage, parenthood, length of relationship) and

earning disparities.

Results: Although stronger relationship invest-

ments were associated with greater support

for sharing all income, the most commonly

selected income allocation arrangement was

a hybrid arrangement of sharing some income

and keeping the rest separate.When respondents

preferred some amount of nancial autonomy,

the primary earner was expected to maintain

ownership of a greater amount of the total

household income. The preferred level of with-

holding income was slightly larger in magnitude

when women were shown as the primary earner

when compared with men shown as the primary

earner.

Population Reasearch Center, 305 E. 23rd Street, Austin,

Texas 78712-1699 (jpepin@prc.utexas.edu).

Key Words: couples, culture, family economics, family

resource management, genderroles, money management.

Conclusion: The pursuit of economic auton-

omy, in combination with beliefs about gender,

are important dimensions of gender inequality

located within families.

I

Two contradictions related to the ways couples

share money are commonly studied. First, cou-

ples must reconcile the conict between their

commitment to a collective family unit and their

desire for individual autonomy (Treas, 1993;

Vogler, Brockmann, & Wiggins, 2008). Sec-

ond, many couples struggle to create equality

in the home given inequalities prevalent in the

labor market (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983; Bur-

goyne, 1990; Pahl, 1989; Treas, 1993; Vogler

et al., 2008). To understand how these contradic-

tions are reconciled within American families,

researchers initially focused on grouping sys-

tems of money arrangements into analytical cat-

egories (Ashby & Burgoyne, 2008; Pahl, 1995).

Thereafter, many have searched for possible

explanations for the prevalence of various cat-

egories and sought to identify the consequences

of these arrangements (for an overview of prior

research, see Bennett, 2013).

Drawing conclusions about how people rec-

oncile these competing cultural values based

on couples’ behavioral practices may be par-

tial or even misleading (Ashby & Burgoyne,

2008, 2009). Behaviors tend to reect a mixture

of attitudes, circumstances, and other factors

(Cherlin, 2009). Teasing apart behaviors that

were adopted with purpose and those that were

taken on for convenience or as a result of tempo-

rary or unexpected circumstances is challenging

Journal of Marriage and Family 81 (April 2019): 361–379 361

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12554

362 Journal of Marriage and Family

using surveys of behavior (Addo, 2017; Treas,

1993). Couples’ treatment of money also may

not fully reect each individual’s valuesbecause

partners with less bargaining power may not

be able to implement their preferred arrange-

ments (Lennon & Roseneld, 1994). Moreover,

couples’ nancial practices generally remain

unchanged throughout the duration of their

relationship, making their behavior a lagging

indicator of current beliefs about the appropriate

treatment of money (Bisdee, Daly, & Price,

2013). People also tend to be particularly bad

at consistently explaining their own behavior

(Swidler, 2001; Vaisey, 2009). An approach that

elicits individuals’ opinions about other people’s

families may reect cultural values better than

assessments of their own family behavior.

This article contributes to the literature

by evaluating beliefs about money sharing

in families, providing new insight into how

people reconcile competing cultural values

(Ridgeway, 2011; Vaisey, 2009). A stream of

qualitative research using nonrepresentative

samples documents the signicance of noneco-

nomic mechanisms for the treatment of money

in families, such as attitudes about families and

gender dynamics (Ashby & Burgoyne, 2008;

Bennett, 2013; Zelizer, 1989). For this study,

I devised a novel vignette-survey experiment

to collect the rst nationally representative

sample of U.S. adults’ beliefs about income

sharing in families. Survey respondents were

presented with a vignette of a ctional couple

that varied in marital and parental status, rela-

tionship duration, and relative incomes and then

asked how the ctional couple should allocate

their income. This survey method is valuable

for understanding the conditions under which

someone might prioritize one cultural value over

another, such as a belief in family cohesiveness

compared with support for economic autonomy

(Cerulo, 2014; DiMaggio, 2014; Swidler, 1986).

The research design also allowed for articial

variation of the environment, such as inating

the disparity in income between high-earning

women and low-earning men (Mutz, 2011).

Doing so facilitates the examination of attitudes

under contexts that might otherwise be difcult

to study given their relative rarity.

This article also addresses a secondary limi-

tation in the existing research on the allocation

of money in families. Prior studies measur-

ing the distribution of income in households

generally disregarded the gradations of survey

response categories “keeping some money sep-

arate” and “keeping all money separate,” choos-

ing instead to study a dichotomous difference of

“pooling all money” and “keeping any money

separate” (for an exception, see Hamplová &

Le Bourdais, 2009). Separate and collective

income distribution arrangements exist on a con-

tinum, which prior research demonstrates war-

rants careful interpretation (Ashby & Burgoyne,

2009; Burgoyne, 2008). Focusing on response

gradations in income separation is important to

understanding the crossroads between the family

domain’s emphasis on interdependence and the

market domain’s emphasis on self-reliance (Bel-

lah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 2008;

Yodanis & Lauer, 2014). Pooling some but not

all money, known as a partial-pooling approach,

may be a preferred arrangement because it facili-

tates the redistribution of income while allowing

continued control over some individual money.

This article treats partial-pooling as a separate

allocation arrangement, considering the grada-

tion of nancial integration.

First, I review theories on the ways vari-

ous families might be expected to treat money.

These expectations are used to develop hypothe-

ses about when respondents prioritize family

unity, evidenced by support for sharing income,

compared with when people might prioritize

economic autonomy in relationships, evidenced

by support for separated money arrangements. I

then draw on theories of bargaining power and

exchange to generate hypotheses about percep-

tions of entitlement to individual ownership of

earned income.

B  H

Family Unity Versus Economic Autonomy

A family unity approach to relationships is char-

acterized by values of family member solidarity,

which prioritizes shared goals over individual

pursuits in part through the sharing of family

resources (Addo & Sassler, 2010; Bellah et al.,

2008). This collectivized approach to nan-

cial arrangements is thought to occur under

the following three conditions: (a) exchanges

are repeated and continuing, (b) investments

in the relationship that cannot be recovered

have already taken place, and (c) evaluation

of repeated exchanges is costly (Treas, 1993;

Williamson, 1975). Accordingly, couples who

have greater relationship investments, such as a