Intra-household inequality and adult material deprivation in Europe

Eleni Karagiannaki and Tania Burchardt

Published 2 March 2020

In most research on living standards, material deprivation is measured using household-level material deprivation indicators. However, if resources are not shared equally within households, conventional material deprivation indicators may mask important variations in individual living standards. In this paper we make use of individual adult-level deprivation data included in the 2014 European Union Statistics on Incomes and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) ad-hoc material deprivation module to examine the implications of intra-household inequality for material deprivation measurement. Results from a series of regression models which examine how adult deprivation indicators vary by various household and individual characteristics suggest that the share of total household income brought in by an individual (our proxy of individuals’ bargaining power within households) has a significant negative effect on the individual’s deprivation risk in most countries, pointing to the incomplete sharing of household resources.