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The Power of the Purse

Allocative Systems and Inequality in Couple Households

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Research in the Unites States concerning the relative access of women and men to financial resources has focused on the influence of women's increasing market work but has largely overlooked the also critical issue of what happens to money after it enters couple households. To fill this gap, this article employs a typology of household allocative systems developed in Great Britain to analyze money management and control in a sample of U.S. couples drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. I find that the use of these systems varies substantially across socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, and relationship status groups, as well as by partners' relative household contributions. The patterns suggest that many women, already disadvantaged in earnings, either absolutely or relative to their partners, are in couples in which men's control over or withholding of income may reproduce or exacerbate their earnings disadvantage.

Key Words: resource allocation • money • couples • family power • households

Gender & Society, Vol. 20, No. 3, 354-381 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0891243206286742


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