Individual Satisfaction within European Families: Determinants and Interrelations

This paper first identifies the determinants of income satisfaction of individuals within the household and, secondly, characterises whether their preferences are altruistic or egoistic. To that end, it formulates a theoretical framework from the collective family model whose stochastic formulations are estimated for 14 EU countries by using the eight waves of the European Community Household Panel-ECHP (1994-2001). After showing that the IV Hausman-Taylor procedure is the selected estimation method in the majority of cases, empirical results reveal that wives show altruistic behaviour in more countries than husbands, with the Southern European countries (Greece, Portugal and Spain) being the only ones that show altruistic behaviour in both the male and female satisfaction variables with respect to wage and non-wage incomes. JEL classification: D13, D60, D63, I31 Correspondence: María Navarro. Department of Economic Analysis, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain. Phone: 34 976 761000 Ext.: 4728, Fax: 34 976 761996, E-mail: [email protected]