Introduction

The household is often regarded as a “black box”, given that it is difficult to investigate the internal material aspects of family life. As stated by Burgoyne et al. (2006: 619), the reason for this is because “so much economic behaviour takes place (literally) behind closed doors”. Traditionally, the family is viewed as a “glued-together” unit whose interests are melded as one (Sen 1997). At least two assumptions underlie this view. First, all household members are assumed to benefit equally, or at least proportionally to their needs, from household resources. Second, incomes are pooled “all in one pot” (Sung & Bennett 2007) for distribution, with no differentiation, and with the mechanisms of control, or decision making, remaining unexamined. These assumptions are applied in particular to co-resident family members or the “family household” (Haddad, Hoddinott & Alderman 1997; UN Women 2019). A related area concerns how money is managed in this domestic space; it is often regarded as an essentially neutral – and endlessly fungible – means of exchange both within and outside the household.

An alternative body of thought, mainly from within feminist economics, has interrogated each of these assumptions and found them wanting on a number of points. First, despite acknowledging that people often derive various benefits from living together, it is argued that, because of the unequal positions of individuals in households, some sharing of resources is often necessary; however, this may not be equal (Himmelweit et al. 2013). Second, some allocation method intervenes between the receipt of household resources and their consumption, which needs to be scrutinized rather than assumed. Finally, in relation to the nature of money, it is argued that, rather than being neutral, money has a “social meaning” in varying contexts. For example, Robeyns (2003: 65) has argued that, “even if household income were shared completely, it is problematic to assume that it does not matter in a well-being assessment whether a person has earned this money herself, or obtained it from her partner”. Money is thus a social and ideological, as well as an economic, medium of exchange and forms an integral part of the “emotional economy” of family life (de Goede 2005; Goode 2010; Zelizer 2002).