ABSTRACT
In both the political and the academic worlds, welfare is heavily trodden ground. Discussions and proposals go back and forth, month after month, year after year. Senators give speeches and professors write books. But curiously, despite all this attention, welfare theory, in the sense of well-being within households, remains largely unexplored territory. We talk a lot about welfare, but we do not know very well what welfare is or how families achieve it.
