金錢與婚姻：夫妻共存錢 婚姻更幸福

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 finances 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.據《彭博觀點》報道，梅甘·麥卡德爾在他的新研究中發現：夫妻共同爲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於一定程度的收入存入家庭賬戶的家庭中是不存在的——每個月只留5%的錢給自己任意支配的人和每個月把所有錢都存入家庭賬戶的人是一樣快樂的。但是每個月把80%的錢拿來用作家庭共同儲備的人要比那些每個月把70%的錢拿來用作家庭儲備的人要快樂得多，以此類推。而把每個月的薪水都放在自己包裏的人是最不快樂的。

麥卡德爾承認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，那麼你不會和他一起存錢），但同時他也指出，那些不願意共同存錢的夫妻更經常爲錢的事情發生矛盾。這個結果並不是我在做我的家政學項目時對6000名Slate的讀者進行調查時得出的直接結果。我並沒有特別尋問他們關於幸福的話題，但是我確實問了他們在錢的問題上會多久發生一次矛盾。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去或是分文不投，他們之間因爲錢的問題發生分歧的次數差異是很小的。

而我確實發現，夫妻結婚的時間越長，他們共同存錢的機率就越大，而且基於我對這些夫妻進行的定性和定量的研究，我也確實相信，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任，如果夫妻之間對是否要給孩子添雙新鞋子都要商討，那麼壓力也會隨之產生。

夫妻雙方若不共同儲蓄，在異性的婚姻關係上，會對女性不利。因爲如果他們各自花各自的錢，那麼孩子的大部分的費用總是由女性承擔。英國社會學家簡·帕爾發現，孩子購置衣物的85%，以及照料孩子和學校的費用的78%都是由女性支付的，而男性則負責家庭用酒的73%和69%的車子費用。帕爾這樣寫道：

用以支付孩子的照料的費用是從夫妻共同賬戶來的還是從個人賬戶來的我們並不知道，但是很明顯的是女性在付賬，因爲是她們把錢或支票遞到我們手上。這對於那些共同存錢，夫妻都可支取的家庭來說這沒什麼。可是對那些各自經濟獨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。

這個調查結果是能說明問題的。從調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，但是這個總括性的說明並沒有詳細說明夫妻之間處理金錢問題的方式和他們之間關係的具體情況。我相信夫妻共同存錢對於那些四十來歲育有兩個孩子的原配夫妻來說的確很好，但是對於那些退了休或是再婚，而且又沒有再生的孩子的家庭呢？對此，我不能確認。