Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Intra-household bargaining refers to negotiations that occur between members of a household in order to arrive at decisions regarding the household unit. Bargaining is traditionally defined in economic terms of negotiating conditions of a purchase or contract and is sometimes used in place of direct monetary exchange. Bargaining also plays a role in the functioning and decision making of households, where agreements and decisions do not often have direct monetary values and affect various members of the household. The household is the basic residential unit in which economic production, consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter are organized and carried out. The household is not always synonymous with family, but in the case of intra-household bargaining, in which members of the household are considered to be a unit dependent upon the functioning of each individual, the household is most commonly synonymous with a family.