Family Money Management Arrangements: Using the 2010 Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey to Study the Portuguese Case

In the last three decades, economists and sociologists have been interested in understanding intra-household money management arrangements among couples, its determinants and its implications on marital power, on intra-household inequalities and on the individual well-being within the family. One important contribution to the field has been the work of Jan Pahl and Carolyn Vogler (1993), who defined an useful, yet not free of criticisms and limitations, typology of money management systems, which has been applied in different cultures and contexts, mainly in the Western countries.

This research field has received limited attention in the Portuguese context, specific for its socio-demographic, labor-market, cultural, religious, and familialistic particularities, in the context of Mediterranean organic communitiesemphasize strong interpersonal interdependent relationships and close family ties within extended kinship relations. This research area may benefit with transcultural comparisons, as such international survey family micro-databases, as the 2002 International Social Survey Program, has been used in the recent years. Also the 2010 Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) is an international survey whose data enables cross-national comparison. Nevertheless, it has never been used before with this purpose.

In this study, we apply Pahl’s typology to the Portuguese case drawing on Portuguese 2010 EU-SILC data, enlightening the Portuguese intra-household money management patterns and its determinants. Of the 5182 households which participated in the Portuguese EU-SILC survey, 3331 composed by at least one heterosexual couple completed the study criteria and were included in our sample. Consistencies and inconsistencies, comparing to previous research, were found. Limitations in the applicability of Pahl’s typology to the Portuguese case, and other difficulties in marrying up data collected at the individual and household level were also found, and its implications for the adaptation and refinement of this typology, as well as the particularities of the Portuguese case, are discussed.