Manage Your Money, Be Satisfied? Money Management Practices and Financial Satisfaction of Couples Through the Lens of Gender

Abstract

There is a difference between who brings in income, who spends and manages money, and who finally benefits. All these aspects are important in determining how satisfied spouses are with their individual financial situation. Relying on Swiss Household Panel (SHP) data from 2004 to 2013 (N = 1,810 couples), this assumption is tested by analyzing how women’s relative income and the management of economic resources within couples affect women’s and men’s financial satisfaction in the household. Results show that a change in the composition of total income in favor of women directly increases their financial satisfaction and net of household income, while men’s financial satisfaction increases up to the point at which women earn more than one third of the total income. Money management regimes serve as an important additional tool in creating and compensating for (dis) advantage between partners. The results are discussed in the context of traditional gender norms in the Swiss Society.

To pool or not to pool? Trends and predictors of banking arrangements within Australian couples

“…It has also been suggested, and occasionally empirically tested, that intra-household organization models may have consequences for many aspects of individual and family life. In this regard, joint management models are generally thought of as leading onto better and more democratic outcomes than separate management models on domains such as relationship adjustment [37] and quality [13], financial satisfaction [15], mental health [14], family relationships [38], marital happiness [9], and the ability of partners to leave unhealthy or unsafe unions [39]. On the other hand, some have argued that financial independence via separate banking may be an important factor safeguarding women’s economic futures in the event of union dissolution [14].…”

“…Key concepts include control (the ability to influence decisions), management (the implementation of decisions already made), and power (resulting from the combination of control and management) [40]. It is however recognized that these are partially overlapping concepts with blurry boundaries [4], that their connections and causal ordering are unclear [9], and that other concepts–such as access, knowledge or consumption–are also relevant [15,41,42]. A key distinction is that between strategic control over how resources are spent (operationalized via decision-making variables in empirical studies) and the day-to-day executive management of resources (operationalized as banking arrangements) [15,23,33].…”

“…It is however recognized that these are partially overlapping concepts with blurry boundaries [4], that their connections and causal ordering are unclear [9], and that other concepts–such as access, knowledge or consumption–are also relevant [15,41,42]. A key distinction is that between strategic control over how resources are spent (operationalized via decision-making variables in empirical studies) and the day-to-day executive management of resources (operationalized as banking arrangements) [15,23,33]. This implies that banking arrangements cannot be taken as a direct proxy for financial control or power within the household [2], although it is clear that they are associated with different degrees of gender equality in financial control [4,23].…”

“…As Yodanis and Lauer [3] explain, couples’ decisions to pool their income in a common pot versus maintaining separate purses is an important indicator of the level of investment and integration in their intimate relationship, as well as the level of equality in such relationship. Because ideological and cultural values affect the choice of management system, gender inequalities in economic well-being may be more strongly tied to women’s access to money than their relative income [15]. Consistent with this, different intra-household economy models have been shown to exacerbate or diminish within-household gender inequalities in decision-making power and living standards [9,24].…”

“…Understanding how couples manage their money is an important endeavor, as couples’ banking practices offer unique insights into the individualization of marriage and family life [10–12] and how individuals reconcile ideals around marriage as an egalitarian relationship with prevailing gender inequalities in society and the labor market [1–2]. Within-couple financial arrangements have also been linked to a host of individual and family outcomes [13–15]. All in all, the study of domestic money goes at the heart of debates about independence and equality in intimate relationships [2].…”