September 2019

Ireland has gender pension gap of 35% – study

Irish men receive an average of €153 more than women in their pension payments, according to research by the Economic and Social Research Unit (ESRI). The study found the average total weekly pension income in 2010 was €280 for women and €433 for men, indicating a gender pension gap of approximately 35%. The total gender pension gap is due to differences in incomes from private and occupational pensions. Some 55% of retired men receive a private or occupational pension,...

August 2019

Gender Gap in Savings Goal Choice: Evidence from Mixed Methods

Ariane Hillig, Jerome Monne, Janette Rutterford, Dimitris Sotiropoulos There has been a good deal of research on gender psychological differences in the context of financial decision making, but no research on the impact of gender difference in the setting of savings goals. To address this question we use two unique datasets, one quantitative and one qualitative. Our quantitative results show that men set more challenging savings goals than women, even when we control for wealth, income, and portfolio risk...

July 2019

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

By Melinda Gates “In her book, Melinda tells the stories of the inspiring people she’s met through her work all over the world, digs into the data, and powerfully illustrates issues that need our attention—from child marriage to gender inequity in the workplace.” — President Barack Obama “The Moment of Lift is an urgent call to courage. It changed how I think about myself, my family, my work, and what’s possible in the world. Melinda weaves together vulnerable,...

June 2019

Retirement Security: Women Face Challenges in Ensuring Financial Security in Retirement

By U.S. Government Accountability Office Women aged 65 and over will account for a growing segment of the U.S. population over the next several decades. Despite increases in women's workforce behavior in the past 65 years, elderly women have persistently high rates of poverty. Thus, it is important to understand the differences between men's and women's retirement income, and how women may fare given future reforms to Social Security and pensions. GAO was asked to examine (1) how...

April 2019

Financial Inclusion in the Europe and Central Asia Region: Recent Trends and a Research Agenda

By Asli Demirguc-Kunt (World Bank), Bingjie Hu (World Bank), Leora Klapper (World Bank) Financial inclusion can help promote development. Inclusive financial systems allow people to invest in their education and health, save for retirement, capitalize on business opportunities, and confront shocks. In the Europe and Central Asia region, there is great variation in financial inclusion. In the euro area, most adults already own an account. Account ownership -- which is the first step of entry into the formal financial system...

The Effect of Pension Subsidies on the Retirement Timing of Older Women: Evidence from a Kink Design in Germany

By Han Ye (University of Mannheim; IZA) I estimate the effect of additional pension benefits on women’s retirement decisions by examining a German pension subsidy program for low-pay workers. The subsidies have a kinked relationship with the recipients’ past contributions, creating a sharply different slope of benefits for similar women on either side of the kink point. I find that a 100 euro increase in the monthly benefit induces female recipients to claim their pensions eight months earlier. A back-of-the-envelope...

July 2018

The Mommy Effect: Do Women Anticipate the Employment Effects of Motherhood?

By Ilyana Kuziemko, Jessica Pan, Jenny Shen, Ebonya Washington After decades of convergence, the gender gap in employment outcomes has recently plateaued in many rich countries, despite the fact that women have increased their investment in human capital over this period. We propose a hypothesis to reconcile these two trends: that when they are making key human capital decisions, women in modern cohorts underestimate the impact of motherhood on their future labor supply. Using an event-study framework, we show substantial...