Household Strategies: The Individual, The Collectivity and The Labour Market - The Case of Married Couples

Recent treatments of the household effects of economic change have tended to focus on household outcomes with reference to the use of resources of time and labour, paying scant attention to differences of power and interest within the home. It is suggested here that the most fruitful focus for the investigation of such intrahousehold divisions is the management of household finance. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate, by reference to existing literature on married couples, that: (a) households constitute an amalgam of often conflicting individual interests, and that (b) some of these interests, particularly as expressed through access to and control over household resources, are closely related to experience and/or behaviour in the labour market. In doing so questions are raised about the balance between personal needs and interests, and those of the household as a collectivity, and the relative significance of both these concerns for the motivation to earn. The notion of a household strategy and the emergence of a strategy in practice should therefore take account of these different interests and the way they are acknowledged or suppressed in the organisation of household finance. In pursuing such analysis it becomes necessary to take account of how far spending obligations and orientations towards spending and consumption are fashioned or constrained by gender roles, and the way in which the emergent patterns interact with position and behaviour in the labour market.