Distribution of Income within the Family

Abstract

tT IS painfully obvious to the student of social policy that growing knowa ledge about the distribution of the national income between families has Snot so far been matched by a growth in knowledge about the distribution of the family income between its members. In place of knowledge, the assumption has often been made, though not stated, that the family, while no longer gonerally considered a unit for the purposes of earning, can still be treated as a unit for the purposes of spending. It has been taken for granted that some members of a family cannot be rich while others are poor. Most pre-war social surveys postulated, and those responsible for policy have continued to assume, that Poerty is a characteristic of a family, and not of an individual, who is said to be in poverty only because he happens to be a member of a family which is in poverty. 2 It is my object to question this assumption by drawing on the available literature, and my purpose to plead with the Ministry of Labour, in its forthcoming Budget Enquiry, and with responsible research agencies generally, to remedy a serious deficiency in our knowledge of our society. To replace assumption by information is no small venture. The first task, itself daunting enough, is to discover the ways in which the total earnings of wage-earlling rnembers are divided up between the different spenders of the family. The second and much more formidable task is to discover the distribution of actual goods and services between the members of the family. It is not as though there were any neat uniformities in behaviour. Habits about money vary between parts of the country and between social classes -indeed each family has its own little peculiarities. Has it to be concluded that good intentions must bow before the inevitability of ignorance ? It would certainly not be worth assaulting the difficulties at all unless there was some little e^iidence to suggest the existence of differential poverty within families. In fact, many outstanding social investigators have recorded that the bread-winners are often the meat-eaters. I will cite a few examples chosen from surveys made over the years.