This study investigates the effects of employment on the status of Pakistani Immigrant women through the analysis of the division of labour In the family. women's access to family resources and their control over sexuality. Migration has brought many changes In the lives of Pakistani women in Britain. Both first and second generation migrant women are engaged in income-earning activities. It is hypothesised that Pakistani women's waged employment in Britain will affect their traditional roles within the family. This thesis examines the changes and continuities in women's status and attempts to see how this has been affected by their employment situation in Britain. The findings of this study suggest that despite women's engagement in waged work the their role in the family remains a subordinate one. Employment does not radically change their traditional roles nor does it liberate them economically or socially. However, waged women seem to be better able to negotiate greater space for themselves within the family.

This thesis uses nonparametric revealed preference methods to derive new tests for consistency with models of consumer behaviour, and discuss the implications for welfare analysis. Chapter 1 demonstrates how to conduct revealed preference analysis when prices, and hence budget constraints, are only partially observed. This chapter extends the revealed preference results of Crawford and Polisson (2015), derived for the static case, to dynamic settings, allowing for storability of goods. Necessary and sufficient conditions for consistency with intertemporal models are derived, which do not require the researcher to distinguish between corner solutions and unavailability of the good, or to impute prices. Chapter 2 discusses the validity of using reported happiness measures as proxies of utility or social welfare, by testing for consistency between revealed and reported preference orderings in Japanese household survey data. Although the expenditure behaviour of most households is consistent with standard models of utility maximisation, it is generally inconsistent with the preference ordering given by their reported happiness. This inconsistency is likely due to reporting error in the happiness measure, and suggests that happiness and utility are empirically distinct and noninterchangeable. Chapter 3 investigates the effect of price inattention on inflation misperceptions and cost-of-living indices, by developing a behavioural model in which consumers only notice price changes above a certain threshold. A data application, using supermarket scanner data, demonstrates that this model generates plausible results; in particular, consumers have more accurate perceptions of inflation during periods of high or volatile inflation, but may substantially misperceive inflation when it is low. These results have important implications for conducting welfare analysis when consumers are not fully attentive to price changes.

One of the key tasks ahead for EU countries is assessment and fight against poverty and social exclusion. Each member of european community has to concern with poverty measurement and prediction of households, which are by poverty endangered. Related to household income decrease under certain level (poverty line) is change of consumer behaviour, which can lead to increase of material inanition. This diploma work is therefore focused on determination of indicators, which either increase the risk of czech household decreasing below poverty line or monitor differences in customer behaviour of relatively "poor" and "rich" households.

A partir de l'objet automobile, cette thèse propose une réponse en trois temps à la problématique du rôle de la consommation matérielle dans la stratification sociale. Grâce aux caractéristiques originales du bien automobile, l'objectif poursuivi est d'interroger la question de l'homogénéisation des styles de vie dans le contexte de la France contemporaine sous trois rapports : les phénomènes de diffusion de l'automobile, la distribution sociale des caractéristiques de l'équipement, la répartition des coûts engendrés par la voiture. Comment caractériser la diffusion d'un objet symbolique de la consommation de masse et quelles sont les limites à cette diffusion ? Comment sont distribués les biens selon leurs caractéristiques dans l'espace social ? Comment varient les différents coûts de l'automobile parmi les groupes sociaux ? Nous répondons à de telles questions en recourant à une analyse secondaires de deux séries d'enquêtes réalisées par l'Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques : les Enquêtes Nationales Transports réalisées en 1981, 1993 et 2007 ainsi que les enquêtes Budget de famille réalisées en 1985, 1989, 1995, 2001 et 2006. / By using the automobile as a social object, this thesis provides a threefold answer to the problem of the role of material consumption in social stratification. Thanks to the very original nature of automobile, we aim at address the question of the homogenization of lifestyles in contemporary France in three differents aspects : the phenomenons of social diffusion, the distribution of the characteristics of the automobile in social space and the repartition of the internal and external costs of the car. How can we characterize the diffusion of a good symbolic of mass consumption ? Which limits does this diffusion assume ? How are distributed the characteristics of the material goods in social space ?How do the differents costs of the automobile vary among social groups ? We adress theses questions by using secondary analysis of two series of suveys conducted by the French institute of statistics : the National Travel Surveys realized in 1981, 1993 and 2007 and the French Household Expenditure Surveys conducted in 1985, 1989, 1995, 2001 and 2006.

This dissertation deals with consumption in Swedish households between 1913 and 2001. More specifically, it asks whose resources matter most in determining consumption patterns. As a second question, the dissertation also attempts to establish whether the fact that simple covariance between a spouse’s background variables implies that the spouse has any influence at all over the household’s consumption decisions. The theoretical background is mostly drawn from literature regarding intra-household allocations: on the one hand cooperative game theory and on the other hand sociological theory. Cooperative game theory establishes influence, say or power within the household as a function of the marriage’s or cohabitation’s alternative cost, i.e., the difference between the utility level for a married or cohabiting person as opposed to a single person. Sociological theory considers the contribution one makes to the total level of utility in the household, whether in the form of monetary income, household work or as something else. This is in part conceptualized as a difference between exit and voice. The dissertation’s statistical analysis uses three surveys of household expenditure conducted in 1913, 1952 and 1999-2001. They give us an excellent picture of what they actually purchased during that year. The sample sizes are 552, 596 and 3,501, respectively. The dissertation’s main result is that human capital is a previously underestimated determinant of influence in consumption decisions. As the female stock of human capital increases, so does her influence over the household’s consumption decisions. In an attempt to determine the level of democracy within households, the dissertation uses a complementary data source: a questionnaire called “The Swedish People 1955”. Here, one of the questions directed to females was whether they checked with their husbands before deciding on a purchase, as a measure of intra-household democracy. This was then regressed upon the female share of total income, ideological position and two forms of human capital, one general and one for household work. Both forms of human capital lead to democratic households, which is taken to mean that human capital is important not only because it increases labor opportunities in the event of divorce (exit) but also because it increases female voice.

The thesis examines the influence of the tax deduction by reason of granting the donation on the taxpayers' behavior. The examination is working with Household Expenditure Survey (2004, 2005) of Czech Statistical Office and with author's own questionnaire survey (2007). In the first part the regression of demographical and economic characteristics on the amount of donation and its probability is run. There are the internal opinions of informant according to the filled questionnaire described in the second part. The regression was processed using Logit, Probit and Tobit models; the following section consists of frequency analysis.