IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rdg/emxxdp/em-dp2010-01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Anything to Keep You Happy?

Author

Listed:
  • Marina Della Giusta

    (School of Economics, University of Reading)

  • Sarah Jewell

    (School of Economics, University of Reading)

  • Uma Kambhampati

    (School of Economics, University of Reading)

Abstract

Whilst there is an abundant supply of theoretical and empirical contributions in cooperative bargaining models on the transfer of material resources within couples and the labour supply patterns of individuals in couples, this literature has so far not been interested in measuring empirically the utilities of partners. Conversely the literature on hedonic wellbeing has recently moved on to assess couple's happiness and the extent to which individuals in couples influence each other's happiness without making reference to the problem of allocation of resources. The latter is however important to both the individual and couple happiness, and in the limit determine whether couples stay together. Here we address the role of the allocation of resources, particularly in the form of time use time and the effect it has on the joint and individual utilities in the couple.

Suggested Citation

  • Marina Della Giusta & Sarah Jewell & Uma Kambhampati, 2010. "Anything to Keep You Happy?," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2010-01, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
  • Handle: RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2010-01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.reading.ac.uk/web/FILES/economics/emdp2010082.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lundberg, Shelly & Pollak, Robert A, 1993. "Separate Spheres Bargaining and the Marriage Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(6), pages 988-1010, December.
    2. David Roodman, 2009. "How to do xtabond2: An introduction to difference and system GMM in Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 9(1), pages 86-136, March.
    3. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Marriage: Part II," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(2), pages 11-26, Part II, .
    4. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell & Paul Frijters, 2004. "How Important is Methodology for the estimates of the determinants of Happiness?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(497), pages 641-659, July.
    5. Richard Layard, 2006. "Happiness and Public Policy: a Challenge to the Profession," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(510), pages 24-33, March.
    6. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "A Theory of Marriage," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of the Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital, pages 299-351, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Manser, Marilyn & Brown, Murray, 1980. "Marriage and Household Decision-Making: A Bargaining Analysis," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 21(1), pages 31-44, February.
    8. Jerome De Henau & Susan Himmelweit, 2007. "Struggle over the pie? The gendered distribution of power and subjective financial well-being within UK households," Open Discussion Papers in Economics 66, The Open University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Economics.
    9. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    10. Becker, Gary S, 1973. "A Theory of Marriage: Part I," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(4), pages 813-846, July-Aug..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alan Piper, 2018. "Adult life satisfaction largely (though not wholly) contemporaneous," Discussion Papers 028, Europa-Universität Flensburg, International Institute of Management.
    2. Piper, Alan T., 2014. "The Benefits, Challenges and Insights of a Dynamic Panel assessment of Life Satisfaction," MPRA Paper 59556, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Miller, Ana Corina & Jack, Claire G. & Anderson, Duncan J., 2014. "An exploration of the factors influencing well-being of farm and non-farm households," 88th Annual Conference, April 9-11, 2014, AgroParisTech, Paris, France 169732, Agricultural Economics Society.
    4. Piper, Alan T., 2018. "Adult life satisfaction: largely (though not wholly) contemporaneous? A System General Method of Moments dynamic panel analysis," MPRA Paper 85601, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Piper, Alan T., 2014. "An Investigation into Happiness, Dynamics and Adaptation," MPRA Paper 57778, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Piper, Alan T., 2013. "Happiness, Dynamics and Adaptation," MPRA Paper 52342, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Marina Della Giusta & Sarah Louise Jewell & Uma Kambhampati, 2011. "Gender and Life Satisfaction in the UK," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(3), pages 1-34.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jara-Díaz, Sergio & Rosales-Salas, Jorge, 2017. "Beyond transport time: A review of time use modeling," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 209-230.
    2. Man Si, 2015. "Intrafamily bargaining and love," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 771-789, December.
    3. Diana Mok, 2007. "Do Two-earner Households Base Their Choice of Residential Location on Both Incomes?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 44(4), pages 723-750, April.
    4. Mariano Rojas, 2010. "Intra-Household Arrangements and Economic Satisfaction," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 225-241, April.
    5. Levin, Mark (Левин, Марк) & Matrosova, Ksenia (Матросова, Ксения), 2018. "Development and Research of Economic Behavior of Households in Changing Conditions [Разработка И Исследование Экономического Поведения Домохозяйств В Изменяющихся Условиях]," Working Papers 041825, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
    6. Telalagic, S., 2012. "Domestic Production as a Source of Marital Power: Theory and Evidence from Malawi," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1243, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    7. Clark, Andrew E. & Etilé, Fabrice, 2011. "Happy house: Spousal weight and individual well-being," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 1124-1136.
    8. repec:rdg:wpaper:em-dp2010-01 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Shelly Lundberg & Aloysius Siow, 2017. "Canadian contributions to family economics," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(5), pages 1304-1323, December.
    10. Doepke, Matthias & Kindermann, Fabian, 2014. "Intrahousehold Decision Making and Fertility," IZA Discussion Papers 8726, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Rubalcava, L. & Thomas, D., 2000. "Family Bargaining and Welfare," Papers 00-10, RAND - Labor and Population Program.
    12. Mariano Rojas, 2008. "Intra-Household Arrangements and Health Satisfaction: Evidence from Mexico," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2008-57, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Carvajal, Andrés & González, Natalia, 2014. "On refutability of the Nash bargaining solution," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 177-186.
    14. Dirk Bethmann & Robert Rudolf, 2018. "Happily ever after? Intrahousehold bargaining and the distribution of utility within marriage," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 347-376, June.
    15. Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2009. "I can't smile without you: Spousal correlation in life satisfaction," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 675-689, August.
    16. Barham, Vicky & Devlin, Rose Anne & Yang, Jie, 2009. "A theory of rational marriage and divorce," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 93-106, January.
    17. Allen M. Parkman, 2004. "Bargaining Over Housework," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(4), pages 765-794, October.
    18. Selma Walther, 2017. "Moral hazard in marriage: the use of domestic labor as an incentive device," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 357-382, June.
    19. Holden, Stein & Bezu, Sosina, 2014. "Are Wives less Selfish than their Husbands? Evidence from Hawk-Dove Game Field Experiments," CLTS Working Papers 3/14, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Centre for Land Tenure Studies, revised 10 Oct 2019.
    20. Bowles, Roger & Garoupa, Nuno, 2002. "Household dissolution, child care and divorce law," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 495-510, December.
    21. COOKE Lynn Prince, 2001. "Impact of Dual Careers on Average Family Size: Comparison of 11 Countries," IRISS Working Paper Series 2001-05, IRISS at CEPS/INSTEAD.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    happiness; utility transfers; time use; care;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2010-01. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alexander Mihailov (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/derdguk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.