Overview

Recent empirical analysis has shown that the distribution of power within households can be far from equal, resulting in unequal command over household resources. This intra-household inequality interacts with and reinforces gender and other social inequalities in entitlements across households, where by 'entitlements' we mean the command over resources that allows opportunities in different domains (consumption, time-use, health, social contacts, etc.). Explaining the causes of unequal individual entitlements and power relations within households is therefore crucial in understanding the persistence of inequalities more generally.

We shall model households as sites of cooperative conflict within which household members cooperate to increase total household entitlement to resources, but are inherently in conflict over the intra-household distribution of such entitlements. Since entitlements encompass the resources people could have access to, not necessarily those that are actually used, they are not directly observable. We therefore have to use other variables to help measure these latent variables. In this project we will use answers to questions on domains of satisfaction (in the first instance income and subsequently leisure etc) as an indicator of individual perceptions of their own and their household's entitlements to corresponding resources (of income, free time etc).

We shall concentrate on heterosexual couples (with and without children) and examine the extent to which household and relative entitlements are affected by factors both from within and beyond the household, and whether some factors are gendered, that is have different effects if they pertain to men or women. For example, that a woman earns a high share of household income might make more difference to the woman's entitlements than it would to the man's if he were the higher earner; this would be a gender difference in the effect of a high share of household earnings on relative entitlements. However, if women's earnings are less valued than men's by both men and women, this is a gender difference in how earnings affect perceptions of household entitlements.

The factors affecting outcomes can be individual, such as each partner's employment status, earnings, and domestic contributions. They can also pertain to the household as a whole, such as the number and age of children or household assets, or be extra-household socioeconomic, cultural and institutional environmental factors, such as the local participation rate of women in employment, the gender pay gap, gender role attitudes, the tax-benefit system and the cost and availability of childcare provision.

Extra-household parameters will be examined for both direct effects on entitlements and indirect effects through their influence on how individual and household level variables affect entitlements or are distributed. For example, a fall in formal childcare costs may directly improve all women's entitlements through giving them a better fall-back position (better opportunities in case of partnership breakdown); it can also indirectly improve the entitlements of those in employment by increasing their perceived net contribution to their household (if childcare costs are seen as coming from their earnings). Finally, if it increases the number of women in employment, the overall effect of reduced childcare costs will be to improve women's entitlements on average overall.

The effect of household and individual characteristics may also differ across regions and countries, not only because of different policies and socio-economic conditions determining the constraints and opportunities affecting entitlements, but also because perceptions, measured by such variables as prevailing gender-role attitudes, may vary cross-culturally. The project will therefore involve cross-country comparisons, which are anyway required to examine extra-household factors that are set by national policy.

Our analysis will draw practical implications for policy development. First, if we know what factors influence entitlements within households, policy can be designed to protect those with less power and enhance equal opportunities. Second, many policies, including those designed to reduce social exclusion, eliminate child poverty and improve family stability, can have indirect effects on intrahousehold allocation processes that can enhance or undermine their effectiveness. Understanding these effects may be key to success in large areas of social policy.

Main research questions

1. What are the factors, internal and external to a household, that impact on the entitlements of members of a household?
2. To what extent do individual factors have different effects according to whether they pertain to men or to women?
3. How do, mainly country-specific, institutional variables affect men's and women's entitlements, both directly and/or through any effect on the impact of individual and household specific variables? May such country-specific, institutional variables also have an indirect effect on these entitlements through the opportunities that they give women and men and thus their own and their household's characteristics?
4. How can these institutional effects and country-specific patterns be explained and what policy lessons can be learned from them for (a) the development of policies to reduce gender inequalities within and beyond households, (b) avoiding policies inadvertently worsening such inequalities, and (c) ensuring that policies, whatever their aim, are enhanced rather than rendered less effective by processes internal to households?