Independent or joint? How relative income and wealth relate to couples’ money management in Eastern and Western Germany

Objective: To assess the prevalence of independent money management (IMM) versus joint management among Eastern and Western German couples, and examine how partners’ relative income and wealth relate to IMM across regional contexts.Background: IMM is advocated in contexts supporting gender equality. However, it remains unclear whether IMM is more prevalent than joint management in contexts with greater gender equality and lower intra-couple economic inequalities when institutional frameworks are comparable but historical pathways to gender equality differ.Method: We analyze data from the German Socio-Economic Panel using logistic regression models. Observations from multiple survey years are pooled to draw on large samples of different-sex couple households in Eastern (N = 2,390) and Western Germany (N = 5,913). Results: Eastern German couples were less slightly likely to manage money independently than Western German couples. While equal labor incomes increased the likelihood of IMM in the West, this effect was weaker in the East. In contrast, wealth parity was consistently associated with lower IMM across both regions, but the association was weaker in the West.Conclusion: Our findings challenge the assumption that resource equality between partners universally fosters greater individualization in money management and highlight the need to account for both income and wealth dynamics in financial arrangements. Despite a shared institutional framework, persistent regional differences in the money management of couples with equal resources point to the lasting influence of historical legacies.