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In thinking about poverty and inequality, we tend to think about whole households as poor, and of income inequalities between households rather than between the individuals within them. The government works that way too, assessing eligibility for state benefits on the level of family income, irrespective of who receives that income, and treating all forms of income in the same way. But in practice how money is spent and the effect it has on members of the household could be radically different depending on to whom it is paid and why.

The project “Within Household Inequalities and Public Policy” is aiming to discover what sort of difference it makes how different types of benefits and tax credits are paid – and, says the OU’s Professor Sue Himmelweit, “our hypothesis is that it might make quite a difference not only to who benefits from that money but also to wider power relationships within the household.”

Prof Himmelweit and her colleagues Prof Holly Sutherland from the University of Essex, Fran Bennett and Sirin Sung from Oxford University have asked a number of low- or moderate-income couples that have or have had children living with them, how they organize their family finances and in particular what happens to money paid by the government to their household, including child benefit, income support or tax credits. “What is particularly interesting from the data we have so far is that there are not only differing views within couples on how money is managed, but also on issues one would think of as purely factual, like what money is coming into the household,” said Prof Himmelweit.

Along with Jérôme de Henau, who will be joining the OU team in December, the researchers will now be looking at data collected in the British Household Panel Survey over past years to see how such patterns of money management have developed, and how they influence power and welfare within households. “We want to find how different sources of income affect power in the household – and what are the effects on the welfare of household members,” said Prof Himmelweit. “For example, evidence in some other countries has shown that extra money earned by a woman is of more benefit to children than that earned by a man because the woman is more likely to spend that money on food and other things that the children need. We are interested in seeing what happens in this country with money that is paid as benefits or tax credits and the difference it makes how and to whom they are paid.”

The researchers will then use their results to help develop a simulation model that would help see how power and influence within families would be affected by potential policies that might change the way in which benefits and tax credits are paid.

The study, which runs until 2009, is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of its Gender Equality Network. Its results are expected to feed into the work of the Women’s Budget Group (WBG), an independent think tank advising government to which the researchers belong. The WBG brings together experts from various fields to comment on the gender implications of economic and social policy and help make it a tool for promoting gender equality.

“The Women’s Budget Group wants to discover how current and potential policy changes impact on gender roles and relationships within and outside households in order to develop policies that improve women's financial autonomy” said Prof Himmelweit. “It explores the ambiguities and tensions that arise in attempting to both improve the distribution of resources between households and women's access to resources within households.”

For further details visit http://www.genet.ac.uk/projects/project5.htm  and http://www.wbg.org.uk