Household Expenditure Patterns: Evidence from Working-Couple Households in Turkey

Abstract

Gender roles in household consumption patterns have been studied in the literature in relation to two models of household behavior; household production model and the unitary versus non-unitary models of the family decision making. The implications of the first model relate to the changes in household expenditure patterns as a result of the withdrawal of the wives from the traditional gender responsibilities at home due to their involvement in paid-labor activities. The studies testing the unitary model of the family behavior, on the other hand, concentrate on the changes in the expenditure patterns resulting from the diverging preferences of the wives together with their increasing bargaining power as their control over the household resources increases. This paper attempts to test the implications of both models utilizing data on working-couple households drawn from the 2003 Household Budget Survey compiled by Statistics Institute of Turkey. For this purpose, four distinct household expenditures- Food Away from Home (FAFH), Processed Food, Personal Care and Recreation-and-Culture- are analyzed by employing Tobit model as the estimation method. The results of the study of two-earner households indicate that the wage rates of the wife and the husband have no statistically different effects on the FAFH, processed food and recreation-and-culture expenditures while the wage rates of the spouses have diverging effects on the personal care expenditures, holding a set of demographic variables constant. Therefore, the Turkish data reveal that the unitary household decision making is valid in the case of goods that are likely to be consumed collectively by the household members whereas the non-unitary household decision making framework is supported in the case of goods that are likely to be consumed separately by the family members. In relation to household production model, our estimation results depict that when hours of work of spouses increase FAFH and Processed Food expenditures increase on average, controlled for a set of demographic variables. However, this increase cannot be solely attributed to the gender roles of spouses but expenditures are likely to increase because both spouses are time constrained.