The Effects of Couples’ Decision-Making about Family Finances on Wives’ Marital Satisfaction among Double-Income Couples

Abstract

  In Japan, double-income couples with children have been increasing over time. Many wives among double-income families earn an income by working and contribute to family finances. This study examines how wives’ relative resources and other factors affect couples’ decision-making regarding family finances, and how patterns of couples’ decision-making affect wives’ marital satisfaction among double-income couples whose youngest child is of junior high school age or older. This study adapted marital power theory, resource theory, and sociological gender stratification theory. Furthermore, the patterns of couples’ decision-making are “collaborative” and “wife-dominant.” This study focuses on 1,252 married working women living in Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, and Kanagawa prefectures. A questionnaire survey was conducted on-line in February 2023. Structural equation modeling yielded three major results. First, the higher income of wives, their older age, their lower gender ideology, and the younger age of husbands encourage collaborative decision-making by couples about family finances. Furthermore, a collaborative decision-making pattern increases the marital satisfaction of wives. Couples where both the husband and the wife have high incomes tend to make collaborative decisions regarding family finances, a result that is well explained by resource theory. Second, the more dominant wives are in decision-making, the greater their marital satisfaction. Since such wives reduce the husbands’ handling of family finances, they maintain traditional gender roles and increase their own marital satisfaction despite their own income. Couples where both the husband and the wife have low incomes or where the husband has a low income and the wife has a high income tend to make wife-dominant decisions about family finances, a result that is well explained by sociological gender stratification theory. Third, the husband’s high income and education level directly increase the wife’s marital satisfaction. This study concludes that wives’ gender equality in marriage and marital satisfaction among double-income couples show diversity depending on marital power and gender ideologies.