Household Consumption

THE CONCEPT OF HOUSEHOLD, like its kindred concept of family, is beset with methodological problems and difficulties in cross-cultural comparison. It survives in anthropological studies of poverty partly on account of researchers’ desire to export the concept from industrial societies in attempts to apply existing economic models to small-scale societies. This led to a conceptual manipulation of indigenous forms of economic organization to fit the model of household. The term first came into use in English and referred to a feudal form of organization that remained in later industrial and postindustrial forms of production, consumption, and resource management.

In developed societies, especially in Europe, it has become a key analytical and policy unit for measuring and responding to socioeconomic inequality. The household is perceived as an economic unit of individuals sharing a permanent residence. This definition has been reinforced by the ideological legacy of the nuclear family in Europe and the United States that critics conceive of as politically and morally influenced. Feminist critics first started to question the measure of “head of household's” income to ascertain socioeconomic status in survey methods. This was seen to undermine the input of women into household economies, as head of household was seen as synonymous with the male breadwinner role. This also undermined alternative living arrangements, such as shared flats and people living in homes for the elderly being seen as marginal forms of living.

Economists became interested in households in the 1960s so as to make predictions from household economic behavior on the behavior of the wider economy. In the modernist rationalist fervor of the time, the household was conceived as a factory with capital goods, raw material, labor, and a manager. The rise of feminist critiques in the 1970s brought the transactional and conflict-ridden nature of household decisions to the fore, undermining the idea that there was one household decision-maker or the notion that households acted as a singular economic entity. More recently the purchasing power of children in market economies has also been recognized.

The importance of noneconomic transactions has also emerged, connected to an interest in social capital. Social capital has drawn attention to reciprocal transactions involving extended kin and nonrelated individuals that can make a contribution to household economies, such as informal childcare. These favors, though not measurable economically, may facilitate economic activity, such as involvement in paid work. This can make a crucial contribution in single-parent households where there is evidence of such reliance on extended kin. This pushes the boundary of household beyond the shared [Page 506]residence and reflects earlier notions of extended family and gift relationships.

The household's central place in government policies of the West has led some critics to suggest that these policies (especially those related to welfare) have overstated or even artificially maintained the household in a certain outmoded form. Both Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States based welfare reform along the lines of the traditional nuclear family, which underpinned their own moral standpoints.

A preference for traditional male-breadwinner families was undermined by a decline in traditional male employment that provided wages capable of supporting families. One consequence of this was the pushing of women in traditionally structured households into the labor market. Later, so-called third-way social policies recognized the change in family forms, notably those referred to in the United Kingdom government's Supporting Families green paper.

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