Intra-household allocation of resources and decision-making. How important are in terms of individual well-being?

This paper aims to analyse the impact of different financial regimes of the couple, defined in terms of the level of income pooling and decision-making responsibilities, on the individual well-being in a number of European countries. Using the EU-SILC 2010 module on intra-household sharing of resources, we find that the financial regimen consisting on not contributing whole incomes to the household and sharing decisions are associated with high levels of well-being, independently of gender and age. Our results also suggest that the level of wellbeing of both males and females is negatively related to financial regimens where decisions fall chiefly on their partners. Finally, taking decision responsibilities is beneficial for females, and the older the greater, while for males this effect only appears when they are old. These results provide evidence of the need to take into account the standard determinants of individual well-being together with variables that capture the ways in which household members make decisions and how they pool incomes in designing policies to improve the welfare of couple members.