July 2024

Retirement Decisions in the Age of Covid-19 are Older Employees in Digital Occupations Working Longer?

By Giovanni Gallo & Amparo Nagore This paper investigates the retirement response to the pandemic and to the resulting acceleration in the adoption of new technologies. Using the European Union Statistics of Income and Living Conditions datasets and making use of the natural experiment of many workers being forced to work from home in Europe during the lockdown, we compare the retirement response of older workers in digital occupations (i.e. more exposed to digital technology) versus non-digital occupations to detect...

Career Expectations and Outcomes: Evidence (on Gender Gaps) from the Economics Job Market

By Brooke Helppie McFall, Eric D. Parolin & Basit Zafar This paper investigates gender gaps in long-term career expectations and outcomes of PhD candidates in economics. For this purpose, we match rich survey data on PhD candidates (from the 2008-2010 job market cohorts) to public data on job histories and publication records through 2022. We document four novel empirical facts: (1) there is a robust gender gap in career expectations, with females about 10 percentage points less likely to ex-ante expect to get...

May 2024

Esade report: Moving from awareness to action in gender lens investing

The Esade Center for Social Impact (ECSI) has published its Gender Strategies in Investing study to better understand how European investors can move from awareness to action in gender lens investing (GLI) by striking a more equitable balance in their own teams as well as by applying a gender lens to their portfolio investments. The study, which was launched at a webinar hosted by two of its co-authors, Leonora Buckland, senior researcher at ECSI and Lisa Hehenberger, associate professor at Esade Business...

Female Labor Supply and Rural Pension Eligibility in Brazil

By Gaurav Khanna, Margaret Lay, Stephanie Lee & Benjamin Thompson In 1991, Brazil expanded its rural old-age pension to cover millions of previously uncovered women, conditional on work requirements.  We use a difference-in-differences approach to show that this expansion drastically increased women’s employment by nine percentage points, or 26 percent.  This increase in labor force participation occurred among women who were immediately age-eligible, and among younger cohorts that would be eligible in the future. These results illuminate the capacity of...

April 2024

UK. Women’s pension pots ‘worth half of mens’

The comparison with male pensions find women’s savings are dwarfed, with men’s pensions average around £75,000. It was also found that men are ‘more likely to manage their own pensions’ than women. Independent research conducted on behalf of Handelsbanken Wealth & Asset Management on gender and the wealth gap. Nearly a third of women were found to have pensions below £25,000 and only one in 10 women have a pension exceeding £100,000, whole this is true for nearly a third...

Wealth Creators or Inheritors? Unpacking the Gender Wealth Gap from Bottom to Top and Young to Old

By Eva Sierminska, Charlotte Bartels & Carsten Schroeder There is growing interest in understanding how gender influences the accumulation of wealth. While prior studies have focused on labor-related determinants, our research focuses on inheritances and gifts. Using unique data that over samples the top 1% of wealth holders in Germany, we show that the gender wealth gap is small for individuals up to age 40, then widens, and declines for those past retirement age. Transfer amounts and their timing are...

March 2024

UK Government ‘continuing to drag its feet’ on women’s pensions

The UK Government has been accused of “continuing to drag its feet” on ensuring women born in the 1950s receive pension equality. Thirty campaigners from the Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) group were in the public gallery as the issue was raised in the Senedd on March 6. The campaign was launched amid concerns about the way in which women’s state pension age was increased from 60 to 66 in line with men. Millions of women saw their retirement plans plunged...

The gender pensions gap report 2024

By Joanne Segars, Lizzy Holliday & Laura Wilkinson The gender pensions gap- the difference in pension savings wealth between men and women at retirement age - is substantial. Allowing for typical working patterns, women's pension wealth is a third (33%) less, relative to men. These figures are the result of a lifetime of reduced earnings potential, increased time out of the workforce and other contributory factors. To bridge this gap themselves, women would need to work an extra 19 years in...

Gender Pension Gap in EU Countries: A Between-Group Inequality Approach

By Antonio Abatemarco, Elena Lagomarsino & Maria Russolillo  Pension entitlements are influenced by individual career paths and labor market conditions, which often result in gender-based disparities. Women face several challenges during their working lives, such as late entry into the labor market, the gender pay gap, discontinuous working careers, and early retirement due to family caregiving, which lead to lower pension incomes. This paper investigates the gender pension gap in nine European Union countries from 2004 to 2020. Our study...

The gender pension gap: What does it tell us and what should be done about it?

By Miglena Abels, Loli Arribas-Banos & Gustavo Demarco Despite recent attention in the media, progress in closing the gender pension gap in most countries has halted. These sources point to a stark disparity in retirement outcomes, with women receiving pensions that are between 25% to 30% lower than those of men. Methodological differences to estimate the gap don’t make it less striking and are no excuse for inaction. Source World Bank