There is evidence that one cannot treat many-person households as a
single decisionmaker. If so, then factors such as the relative incomes of
the household members may affect the final allocation decisions made by
the household. The authors develop a method of identifying how incomes
affect outcomes given conventional family expenditure data. They assume
that household decision processes lead to efficient outcomes. The authors
apply their method to a sample of Canadian couples with no children. They
find that the final allocations of expenditures on each partner depend
significantly on their relative incomes and ages and on the level of
lifetime wealth. Copyright 1994 by University of Chicago Press.
