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

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.