The objective of this paper is to test the 'income-pooling' hypothesis implicit in the 'common preference' model of the family for immigrant and non-immigrant married women in Canada. We employ two cross-sections for the Family Expenditure Survey - 1986 and 1992. The hypothesis is tested against the 'bargaining' model which belongs to an alternate class of family models known as 'collective' models. Consistent with previous findings, we find that the pooling hypothesis is rejected for non-immigrant women. In addition, we find that the pooling hypothesis is also rejected for immigrant women. The rejection of the pooling hypothesis implies that the transfer income received by a wife and the transfer income received by a husband have different effects on labour supply. This has important policy implications as to the effect on women's labour supply of transfers received by her or her spouse under family policies such as the Child Tax Benefit in Canada.

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womens employment Canada labor market income gender role immigrant population