We present the results of an experiment measuring social preferences within couples in a context where intra-household pay-off inequality can be reduced at the cost of diminishing household income. We measure social norms regarding this efficiency-equality trade-off by reported beliefs about the behavior of peers, and we implement a cross-country comparison between France and Germany. In particular, we show that German households are more income-inequality averse and thus less income-maximizing than French households. Decomposition reveals that diverging sample compositions in the two countries drive less than half of the difference, while over half of the initial French/German difference remains unexplained. Beliefs differ significantly from observed behavior in both countries. Income-maximizing choices are overestimated in the German sample and underestimated in the French.
We present the results of an experiment measuring social preferences within couples in a context where intra-household pay-off inequality can be reduced at the cost of diminishing household income. We measure social norms regarding this efficiency-equality trade-off by reported beliefs about the behavior of peers, and we implement a cross-country comparison between France and Germany. In particular, we show that German households are more income-inequality averse and thus less income-maximizing than French households. Decomposition reveals that diverging sample compositions in the two countries drive less than half of the difference, while over half of the initial French/German difference remains unexplained. Beliefs differ significantly from observed behavior in both countries. Income-maximizing choices are overestimated in the German sample and underestimated in the French.