Gender gap in pension income: Cross-country analysis and role of gender attitudes

Date

2020

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Tartu Ülikool

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the gender pension gap in Europe based on the newest EU-SILC data from 2018 wave. The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, it provides evidences on factors shaping the gender pension gap in a large number of EU countries. Secondly, it analyses the relationship between pension gap and (1) coverage by occupational (the second pillar) pensions and (2) gender attitudes. The main factor contributing to gender inequality in pension income is the number of years in employment. The influence of tertiary education is in the direction of increasing the gap, while the effect is opposite when hourly labour income gap is considered. Higher coverage by occupational pensions corresponds to higher gender pension gap. This implies that the privatization of pension plans can lead to conversion of wage gap into pension income gap and reinforce women disadvantage after retirement. Additionally, positive relationship is observed between unexplained portions of pension income gap and labour income gap. This could be a ground of hypothesis that unexplained portions are formed by the same, persistent in time, factors. One of such factors could be gender norms, it is found that countries with more gender equality support have lower unexplained portions of labour income and pension gap.

Description

Keywords

inequality in retirement, gender gap in pensions, gender attitudes, occupational pension (the second pillar), sooline pensionilõhe, tööandjapension (II sammas)

Citation