Allocation of expenditures within the household: A new Danish survey*

We report on a new data initiative that is designed to address the question of “who gets what” within the household. The data consists of supplements to the Danish Expenditure Survey (DES) which is a traditional nationally representative, diary based survey of expenditures. We collect supplementary data of two kinds for all couples (with or without children) in the survey. The first addition is that respondents report on the intra-household allocation of each item of expenditure (‘joint’, ‘her’, ‘him’, ‘children’ and ‘outside’). The second addition is an extra set of ‘sociological’ questions concerning household management, autonomy and family background. These types of information for the same respondents may facilitate research bridging the divergent views of economist and sociologists concerning the allocation of resources within the household.
The paper focuses on the survey design and gives some descriptive statistics from the survey. We also show how the distribution of expenditure on clothing, which is investigated in most expenditures surveys, is related to the distribution of expenditure on other goods.