September 2023

UK. Pensions: Women get 35% less than men due to care responsibilities

Women's private pension funds are 35% lower than men's, according to the UK government's official estimates. Private pensions consist of workplace schemes or personal pensions set up by individuals using independent companies. Taking time off or going part-time means paying less into pensions during your working life. A charity said employers should do more to support women with caring responsibilities. Rowan Davies, 34, from Cardiff, is currently on maternity leave while caring for her five-month-old son Mabon. She said she was "very aware" of...

UK. ‘Real risk of new generation of pension inequality if action not taken’

There is a “real risk” of a new generation of pension inequality emerging if further action is not taken, according to new research. Government, employers and the pensions industry need to act, the report from consultants LCP (Lane Clark & Peacock) said. The Government should take further steps to reduce the inequalities which arise following the birth of a child, including effective policies on shared parenting and greater provision of support for childcare for the youngest children, the report said. Employers should...

August 2023

South Africa. Women struggle to retire as early or as securely as men

Longevity literacy is critical to help women live confidently and securely when it comes to their wind-down years. South Africa’s gender pension gap sits at 26%, reflecting the average difference in retirement income between men and women. Farzana Botha, segment manager at Sanlam Risk and Savings, said that often, women cannot afford to retire as early or as comfortably as men. She believes that turning this around should be a national imperative. Botha said: “A multitude of factors contribute to...

July 2023

How the 1963 Equal Pay Act and 1964 Civil Rights Act Shaped the Gender Gap in Pay

By Martha J. Bailey, Thomas E. Helgerman & Bryan A. Stuart In the 1960s, two landmark statutes—the Equal Pay and Civil Rights Acts—targeted the long-standing practice of employment discrimination against U.S. women. For the next 15 years, the gender gap in median earnings among full-time, full-year workers changed little, leading many scholars and advocates to conclude the legislation was ineffectual. This paper uses two different research designs to show that women’s relative wages grew rapidly in the aftermath of this...

June 2023

A review of gender differences in retirement income

By Jennifer Curtin & Yanshu Huang  A research report prepared for the Commission for Financial Capability’s Review of Retirement Income Policy, July 2019. This review seeks to answer the following questions: How wide is the Gender Pension Gap in New Zealand? What is the coverage of KiwiSaver by gender? How does this compare with international trends? Is the Gender Pension Gap reducing (as gender pay gaps are) over time (drawing on both international and NZ data where available)? What accounts...

U.K. effort looks to bring parity to retirement savings

U.K. retirement funds, consultants and money managers are gearing up to jointly tackle retirement inequality. Starting with the gender pension gap — in which males hold vastly more savings than women — a newly formed coalition is looking to develop new planning tools and guidance for plan participants. The Pensions Equity Group, a collaboration of retirement industry professionals, is working to help achieve better equality of retirement savings by developing ways to consistently measure retirement inequalities and potentially press for needed...

UK. What can be done about the ‘great gender pension chasm’?

Thank you for the depiction of the “great gender pension chasm”, (Women’s private pensions worth 35% less than men’s in Great Britain, 5 June). It is something we’ve long been concerned about and tracked for a number of years, examining how it has persistently shaped women’s retirement prospects for the worse. The vast inequality between private pension pots for men and women is alarming. The findings of the latest Department for Work and Pensions gender pension report show the need...

May 2023

More than half of U.S. women don’t feel financially secure: survey

More than half of U.S. women say they aren’t financially secure, a percentage that increases to 77 per cent among low-income women, according to a survey by Public Opinion Strategies and Lake Research Partners on behalf of the National Council on Aging and the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement. The survey, which polled more than 1,200 women aged 25 and older, found nearly half said they don’t have an employer-sponsored retirement plan. Among low-income women, three-quarters said they don’t...

March 2023

The gender gap in pension saving

By Jonathan Cribb, Heidi Karjalainen & Laurence O’Brien This report is an output from a programme of research on ‘Pension saving over the lifecycle’ (WEL /FR-000000374) that is funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Co-funding from the ESRCfunded Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy (ES/T014334/1) is also gratefully acknowledged. We are grateful to Alex Beer, Carl Emmerson and Paul Johnson for useful comments, and to Rowena Crawford for discussion and advice on this work. This work was produced using data from...

Legal & General U.S. Gig Economy study

By Sir Nigel Wilson, John Godfrey & Edyta Borowy (Legal & General) The data was collected via online survey fielded to individuals sample sourced from YouGov’s US panel. The survey scripted and hosted on Gryphon, YouGov’s proprietary survey scripting platform and the field work took place between August 19 and 31, 2022. 1,044 surveys of freelancers and self-employed workers between 18 and 60 years old, non-student/non retired drawing 60% or more of their income from gig work were completed. Key...