In Bloomberg View, Megan McArdle discusses new research that shows that the more couples pool their money, the happier their marriage is. These effects seem to peter out at some very high level—if you keep 5 percent of your income to yourself in order to have a little bit of discretionary spending, it won’t make you any less happy than you’d be if you pool 100 percent. But people who pool 80 percent are happier than those who pool 70 percent, and so on. People who keep it all to themselves are the least happy. McArdle cops to possible selection bias (if you don’t trust your spouse, you’re not going to be pooling money), but also notes that couples that don’t pool their earnings fight more about money. That’s not exactly what I found when I surveyed almost 6,000 Slate readers for my Home Economics project. I didn’t ask about happiness specifically, but I did ask about how often couples fought about money. There were negligible differences in the amount of fighting among couples that pooled all their money, some of their money, and none of their money. But I did find that the longer couples were together, the more likely they were to pool their money, and I do think, based on my quantitative and qualitative look at these couples, that if you have children, keeping money entirely separate will lead to a lot of unnecessary stress. A child is the ultimate shared responsibility, and if you have to hash it out every time your kid needs new shoes, that’s going to create stress. It’s also bad for women in heterosexual unions, because they end up paying for the lion’s share of kid expenses when couples keep their money separate. British sociologist Jan Pahl found that mothers were paying for 85 percent of their children's clothes and 78 percent of their child care and school expenses, while fathers paid for 73 percent of the family’s alcohol and 69 percent of their car expenses. Pahl writes: We do not actually know whether payments for childcare come from joint accounts or individual accounts, but it is clear that typically women pay the costs of children, in the sense that they hand over the money or pay the bill. This does not matter if all the money coming into the household is pooled in a joint account to which both partners have access. However, it may be a very different story if the partners keep their ?nances separately and there is no expectation of sharing, either in income or spending. That makes sense. As does the overall notion that couples that don’t pool any money are less happy than couples that do. But that blanket statement doesn’t account for the intricate nuances of how different kinds of couples manage their money and their relationships. I buy that pooling money is the best for a 40-year-old couple on their first marriage with two kids. But a couple of retirees on their second marriage, with no shared children? I’m not so sure.
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據(jù)《彭博觀點(diǎn)》報(bào)道,梅甘·麥卡德爾在他的新研究中發(fā)現(xiàn):夫妻共同為家庭賬戶存的錢越多,他們的婚姻越幸福。 這一影響似乎在把高于一定程度的收入存入家庭賬戶的家庭中是不存在的——每個(gè)月只留5%的錢給自己任意支配的人和每個(gè)月把所有錢都存入家庭賬戶的人是一樣快樂的。但是每個(gè)月把80%的錢拿來用作家庭共同儲(chǔ)備的人要比那些每個(gè)月把70%的錢拿來用作家庭儲(chǔ)備的人要快樂得多,以此類推。而把每個(gè)月的薪水都放在自己包里的人是最不快樂的。 麥卡德爾承認(rèn)他的研究可能存在一些選擇性偏見(如果你不信任你的配偶,那么你不會(huì)和他一起存錢),但同時(shí)他也指出,那些不愿意共同存錢的夫妻更經(jīng)常為錢的事情發(fā)生矛盾。這個(gè)結(jié)果并不是我在做我的家政學(xué)項(xiàng)目時(shí)對(duì)6000名Slate的讀者進(jìn)行調(diào)查時(shí)得出的直接結(jié)果。我并沒有特別尋問他們關(guān)于幸福的話題,但是我確實(shí)問了他們?cè)阱X的問題上會(huì)多久發(fā)生一次矛盾。無論夫妻雙方是把所有的錢都投入家庭賬戶,或是把一部分錢投進(jìn)去或是分文不投,他們之間因?yàn)殄X的問題發(fā)生分歧的次數(shù)差異是很小的。 而我確實(shí)發(fā)現(xiàn),夫妻結(jié)婚的時(shí)間越長,他們共同存錢的幾率就越大,而且基于我對(duì)這些夫妻進(jìn)行的定性和定量的研究,我也確實(shí)相信,如果夫妻育有孩子,他們一起存錢就能避免很多不必要的壓力。孩子是婚姻中最首要的共同責(zé)任,如果夫妻之間對(duì)是否要給孩子添雙新鞋子都要商討,那么壓力也會(huì)隨之產(chǎn)生。 夫妻雙方若不共同儲(chǔ)蓄,在異性的婚姻關(guān)系上,會(huì)對(duì)女性不利。因?yàn)槿绻麄兏髯曰ǜ髯缘腻X,那么孩子的大部分的費(fèi)用總是由女性承擔(dān)。英國社會(huì)學(xué)家簡·帕爾發(fā)現(xiàn),孩子購置衣物的85%,以及照料孩子和學(xué)校的費(fèi)用的78%都是由女性支付的,而男性則負(fù)責(zé)家庭用酒的73%和69%的車子費(fèi)用。帕爾這樣寫道: 用以支付孩子的照料的費(fèi)用是從夫妻共同賬戶來的還是從個(gè)人賬戶來的我們并不知道,但是很明顯的是女性在付賬,因?yàn)槭撬齻儼彦X或支票遞到我們手上。這對(duì)于那些共同存錢,夫妻都可支取的家庭來說這沒什么??墒菍?duì)那些各自經(jīng)濟(jì)獨(dú)立且在收支上又不懂得分享的家庭來說,情況就完全不同了。 這個(gè)調(diào)查結(jié)果是能說明問題的。從調(diào)查的總體來看共同存錢的夫妻的確比不共同存錢的夫妻過得幸福,但是這個(gè)總括性的說明并沒有詳細(xì)說明夫妻之間處理金錢問題的方式和他們之間關(guān)系的具體情況。我相信夫妻共同存錢對(duì)于那些四十來歲育有兩個(gè)孩子的原配夫妻來說的確很好,但是對(duì)于那些退了休或是再婚,而且又沒有再生的孩子的家庭呢?對(duì)此,我不能確認(rèn)。 相關(guān)閱讀 (譯者 Margaretyuan? 編輯 丹妮) |
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