It may not be news to parents of teenage girls, but researchers have confirmed that no one can stop their 16-year-old daughter from deciding how the family spends its money. The willpower and determination of teenage girls give them a big say in how a family’s money is spent on everything from food and meals to mobile phones, and, of course, clothes. Teenage boys did not show up at all in the analysis, which was designed to find out the influence of young people on household spending. The findings on the spending power of teenage girls were calculated from Office for National Statistics records of family spending during the 1980s and 1990s. Researchers examined how much money went on services and leisure goods in different kinds of homes. They checked spending on food, restaurant meals, alcohol, tobacco, services, heating, transport, clothes and sports in 2,745 British families. They found that teenage girls in the UK typically played an active role in family decisions about the allocation（分配）of household resources. But older children— those over the age of 21 who are still living with their parents—appear to have no say in household decisions. They also tried to calculate to what extent the bargaining power of a teenager affected family budgets. “Every parent knows that children, even at a very early age, have their own preferences with regard to consumption, researchers said. “But children are only interested in a limited range of goods—mainly sweets and toys—and parents are able to use punishment to reduce their children’s bargaining power or remove it.” When they become teenagers, however, girls are much more independent and they are capable of earning their own money, which improves their bargaining power in family decisions. The researchers could not explain why girls have more influence over spending while the evidence for boys is much less conclusive. However, this study could be of great significance to market research and how marketers target children. 小题1: From the passage we can learn that .
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