Intra-Household Inequality in Transitional Russia

The paper proposes an original strategy for analyzing household sharing of income and satisfaction. Using two different subjective questions from the Russian data RLMS (Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey), we assume a correspondence between, first, the perception of income that household members report and their true income sharing, and, second, between their answer to a satisfaction question and their utility. We show that answers given by different members of the household bring pertinent information on income sharing and utility in the household. In particular, we find a significant effect of the female-male wage ratio in reported income perception and satisfaction differentials between household members. Given that the available data covers the transition period (1994-2003) characterized by massive economic and social changes in Russia, we investigate the dynamics of household behavior.