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Dual-Income Marital Dyads and Mutually Discrepant Economic Versus Personal Information: An Exploratory Investigation

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Abstract

There is an assumption in economic decision-making literature that decision-making in household follows a single set of preferences. The present study is aimed at testing this assumption by investigating 28 dual-income couples (drawn from four occupational sectors namely, IT, public service, self-employment and social-service) and separately eliciting two types of (economic and personal) objective information from dyad members. Effects of key demographic variables (marital role, age, occupation & level of education) suggest that only marital role had a significant influence on discrepancy found in reported information. One way ANOVA showed that marital role had a significant effect on discrepancy observed in personal information rather than for discrepancy in economic information. Implications of the results for social science research methods and in terms of singular preference for a household are briefly discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, 400076, India

    Varsha Singh

  2. School of Management, Marketing and International Business, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia

    Thomas Kalliath

  3. School of Social Work, Australian Catholic University, 223 Anthill Road, Watson, ACT, Australia

    Parveen Kalliath

Authors
  1. Varsha Singh
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  2. Thomas Kalliath
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  3. Parveen Kalliath
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Varsha Singh.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 1 Table showing descriptive statistics for the current sample (n = 56) according to the variables of interest, their categories and sub categories
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Fig. 1
figure 1

Showing role of the participant (husband or wife) and direction of discrepancy in economic information (income) reported by self and by spouse

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Fig. 2
figure 2

Showing role of the participant (husband or wife) and direction of discrepancy in personal information (duration/length of marriage) reported by self and by spouse

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Singh, V., Kalliath, T. & Kalliath, P. Dual-Income Marital Dyads and Mutually Discrepant Economic Versus Personal Information: An Exploratory Investigation. Psychol Stud 55, 263–269 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-010-0029-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-010-0029-y

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