Income pooling and equal sharing within the household : what can we learn from the 2010 EU-SILC module?

The 2010 EU-SILC thematic module on intra-household allocation of resources was aimed at investigating income organization, household members' contribution to common expenses, as well as access to and control over money within households. This Working Paper is an exploration of the results of this module. The first part is centred on the assumptions of income pooling and equal sharing founding the measurement of equivalent income and in turn inter-individual inequality and individuals' poverty risk. A tentative estimation suggests that these assumptions might be unfounded for about 30% of the households. The second part of the paper, focusing on not retired couples, examines the association between the extent of income pooling and couples' characteristics. A statistical analysis shows that income pooling is more frequent among married couples, couples with dependent children, or in which only one partner is economically active and less frequent among higher educated or richer couples. Going along, the paper points at various methodological difficulties and limitations when dealing with "intra-household" issues.