Income distribution and financial satisfaction between spouses in Europe

Jens Bonke ()

The Journal of Socio-Economics, 2008, vol. 37, issue 6, pages 2291-2303

Abstract: The article analyses the distribution of income between spouses and the consequences for their financial satisfaction within different welfare regimes. We find that the financial satisfaction of husbands declines and that the financial satisfaction of wives increases the more a wife earns relative to her husband. However, the relationships are often of an inversed U-shaped form for both sexes, with men achieving the highest satisfaction at an earlier stage than women. Within the Scandinavian welfare state regime this optimal distribution is found closer to the actual income distribution than in the continental European and liberal regimes, and in the southern European regime the optimal distribution is far from being achieved.

Keywords: Household production and intrahousehold allocation Personal income; wealth and their distributions Comparative analysis of economic systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008

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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:37:y:2008:i:6:p:2291-2303

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