Intrahousehold allocation of resources and household deprivation

This paper analyzes to what extent the financial regime of the couple, defined in terms of the level of income pooling and decision-making responsibilities, is associated with different levels of household deprivation and also with specific domains of deprivation, namely economic strain, durables and housing. We conclude that contributing incomes to the household, either totally or partially, reduces deprivation, specifically economic strain. This reduction is even more noticeable in the presence of children. We also find that sharing the responsibility for decision making reduces deprivation. In particular, by areas of decision we find that, first, deprivation is not significantly influenced by which member of the couple, either the man, the woman or both, has most decision-making responsibilities in terms of durables; second, deprivation increases when the female (male) decides on issues related to borrowing (children); third, if the woman decides about everyday shopping, deprivation diminishes and this effect is weaker if she is the one who earns more in the couple; and finally, deprivation decreases if the partner who earns more decides about savings, and even more so in the economic strain domain. All these results give evidence of the need to take into account the standard determinants of deprivation together with variables that capture the ways in which household members make decisions and how they pool incomes in designing policies to reduce deprivation.