Sharing of Resources Within the Family and the Economics of Household Decision Making

• Date: 01 June 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12032
• Author: Cristina Santos,Almudena Sevilla,Susan Himmelweit,Catherine Sofer
• Published date: 01 June 2013

SUSAN HIMMELWEIT AND CRISTINA SANTOS The Open University

ALMUDENA SEVILLA Queen Mary University of London∗

CATHERINE SOFER Universit´

e Paris 1 Panth´

eon – Sorbonne∗∗

Sharing of Resources Within the Family and the

Economics of Household Decision Making

Over the last 3 decades, economic models

have been developed that recognize that poten-

tially conf‌licting interests may shape household

decisions and the sharing of resources within

families. This article provides an overview of

how decision making within households has

been modeled within economics, presents the

main benef‌its and limitations of those mod-

els, and critically assesses their usefulness to

researchers from other disciplines interested in

the within- household distribution of resources.

The main focus is on the theory, empirical appli-

cation, and results of the currently dominant

collective models, but the authors also look at

developments that led up to them and some sub-

sequent extensions and alternative approaches.

Given the weight placed by policymakers and

others on economic and quantitative evidence,

Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University, Walton

Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom.

∗School of Business and Management, Queen Mary

University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS,

United Kingdom (a.sevilla@qmul.ac.uk).

∗∗Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, Universit´

e Paris 1

Panth´

eon – Sorbonne, Maison des Sciences Economiques,

106-112 Boulevard de l’Hˆ

opital, 75647, Paris Cedex 13,

France.

This article was edited by Fran Bennett.

Key Words: collective models, family economics, family

resource management, gender, inequality, rational choice.

it is incumbent on researchers of all disciplines

to understand the achievements and limitations

of the models used, explicitly or implicitly, to

produce such evidence and the assumptions that

lie behind them.

The aim of this article is to provide a non-

technical overview of how decision making

within households has been modeled within

economics and to make the case for why

researchers from other disciplines who are

interested in the within-household distribution

of resources might benef‌it from understanding

the achievements and limitations of such models.

Previous surveys (e.g., among others, Browning,

Chiappori, & Weiss, 2011; Vermeulen, 2002)

have been aimed more at those who take the

benef‌its of economic modeling for granted; here

our aim is to contribute more to debates on

methodologies for within-household research

and critically assess the usefulness of these

models for that purpose.

Becker’s (1981) path-breaking Treatise on the

Family was the f‌irst to insist on the need for an

economic model of how people with differing

preferences living in multiperson households

make decisions, a process misleadingly called

household decision making. Until then, the

outcomes of such collective decisions had been

modeled using the tools of rational choice

theory that had been developed for the analysis

of individual decision making. Indeed, this

Journal of Marriage and Family 75 (June 2013): 625 –639 625

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12032