1. Assessing the gender gap in retirement savings arrangements
This chapter assesses the difference in retirement income that men and women receive across OECD countries, and the extent to which retirement savings arrangements may contribute to this overall gender gap. It explores the main drivers of this gap in the labour markets, before looking into other factors that can create a gap in retirement income coming from retirement savings arrangements.
Women receive lower pensions than men worldwide. This is partly due to the fact that, overall, women tend to have earned less and had shorter careers than men during their working lives. The pensions received today by those who are already retired reflect past differences in their careers. However, the transmission mechanism varies across the different layers of the pension system.
This chapter estimates the gender gap in total retirement income in OECD countries and examines to what extent this may be attributed to retirement savings arrangements (i.e. funded pension plans).1 This chapter aims to uncover any evidence of a difference in retirement income that men and women receive from retirement savings arrangements and touches upon some of the underlying drivers.
The analysis confirms the gap in retirement income that women receive from their retirement savings plans, occupational and personal plans, compared to men in certain countries. Differences in men and women’s labour market outcomes have been narrowing, which should narrow the private pension gap between men and women over time, but other factors may continue to widen it. There is still a gap in the proportion of men and women covered by a retirement savings arrangement in many OECD countries. Women with retirement savings plans usually have a lower balance than men, and this gap compounds over their career. Additionally, the pay-out options that women may have at retirement could exacerbate the gap in retirement income further.
This chapter first defines what this publication considers as the gender pension gap. Secondly, it assesses this gap across OECD countries. Thirdly, it examines whether and to what extent retirement savings arrangements may play a role in this gender pension gap. The fourth section looks at factors in the labour markets that can explain the current gender pension gap, while the fifth section looks into other factors (beyond labour market inequalities) that can create a gap of retirement income coming from retirement savings arrangements. The last section concludes.
Individuals may receive income from several sources at retirement. Retirees may get a public (old-age) pension, they may also draw on their assets in retirement savings arrangements. Widow(er)s benefit from survivor’s pensions in most OECD countries (OECD, 2018[1]). Some retirees may simply continue to work during retirement and earn some income from that work.
Men and women may not be on an equal footing in retirement. In particular, they may not receive the same benefit payments from the overall pension system (public and private) in a given year, creating a potential gap.2
A gap in retirement income, i.e. a gender pension gap, is the difference between the average retirement income of men and women in the latest year available. It is expressed as a percentage of men’s average pension and is calculated over the population of pension beneficiaries aged 65+ for comparability purposes across countries.3 Calculations exclude those with no pension at all. Work-related earnings for people aged 65+ are excluded from the calculations, as they do not represent a retirement income. One-off payments (i.e. lump sums) that can be received from retirement savings plans are not taken into account in the calculations of the gender pension gap, unless they are used to purchase an annuity product.
The analysis of the gender pension gap relies on multinational household survey data. Multinational household surveys contain information about streams of income from both the public and private pension systems for the elderly, and are harmonised across countries.4 Some other sources (e.g. focus group analyses) can also provide insights and complement the analysis of the gender pension gap and its drivers (Box 1.1).
The calculation of a gender pension gap requires knowledge of all the sources of income that men and women receive from the public and private pension arrangements.
Several sources provide information on the income of the elderly. These sources include supervisory data, tax data and survey data. Supervisory authorities compile information on benefit payments to retirees from private pension providers and the type of payment (e.g. lump sum payments, pensions). Tax and survey data can provide extensive information on the source of income for individuals by gender, taking into account all the income flows (from the public and the private pension systems) and the different providers (pension funds, insurance companies) of private pensions. Some other sources, such as focus group analyses, can also provide detailed information on the pension benefits retirees receive. Industry groups may also carry out studies on their clients for a better understanding of their preferences and behaviours.
The analysis of the gender pension gap in this publication is mainly based on household survey data as they include information on retirement income from public and private pension arrangements (unlike supervisory data), they are representative of the whole population through their sampling and weighting procedures (unlike focus group studies) and are easily available to the research community. This publication favours multinational household surveys as they cover multiple countries and compile information on retirement income in a standardised fashion (which may not be the case for tax data). Unfortunately, lump sum payments may not be considered as a (regular) retirement income in household surveys unless individuals purchase an annuity product with the lump sum payments. Household surveys are therefore useful for assessing a gender gap in regular retirement income but less appropriate for measuring a gender gap in pension wealth (that would take into account one-off payments as well as how long the regular payments are carried out).
However, household survey data contain useful demographic information about individuals (marital status, age, type of job). This information can be relevant to any analysis of the drivers of the gender pension gap during individuals’ working lives.
This section examines the extent to which men and women receive a different retirement income from all (public and private) sources combined in retirement.
All reporting OECD countries have a gender pension gap when looking at the extent to which men and women receive different income at retirement (i.e. pensions) from all sources combined, public and private. The gap ranges from 3% in Estonia to 47% of men’s average retirement income in Japan (Figure 1.1). On average, women aged 65+ receive 26% less income than men from the pension system in the OECD. In other words, women aged 65 or more receive around 74% of the retirement income of men from public and private pension arrangements on average in the OECD. These results are overall in line with previous work from the OECD on this subject using other sources (OECD, 2017[2]), although the size of the gap may vary to some extent for some countries depending on the underlying source (Box 1.2).
Note: The gender gap in pensions is calculated as the difference between the mean retirement income of men and women (aged 65+) over the mean retirement income of men (aged 65+), among pension beneficiaries. Calculations are based on the LIS, except for: France, Latvia and Portugal where the HFCS (Wave 3) was used; and Iceland, Sweden and Turkey where results come from the EU-SILC (published on Eurostat's website). Data come from the latest available survey, conducted in: 2013 for Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and the Slovak Republic; 2014 for Australia; 2015 for Hungary and Slovenia; and after 2015 for all the other countries. Data refer to 2017 for Iceland and 2018 for Turkey. (1) In Belgium when partner A’s pension rights are less than 25% of those of partner B, the pension of A is not paid out and B receives a family pension (calculated at 75% of wages instead of 60%).
Source: OECD calculations based on the LIS and the HFCS; Eurostat (for the EU-SILC).
The size of the gender pension gap may vary across different household surveys. Several multinational household surveys gather standardised information on the retirement income of men and women in a number of countries. These surveys include the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), the Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS) and the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Altogether, these surveys cover all OECD countries but Israel, Korea and New Zealand. Annex 1.A briefly presents the variables on retirement income that these surveys cover.
These multinational surveys follow different approaches to standardise survey responses across countries. The HFCS and the EU-SILC define a common framework ex ante that participating national bodies can use to design a survey tailored to their own country. The underlying national surveys allow for the production of harmonised outputs across countries following the HFCS and the EU-SILC frameworks. By contrast, the LIS and the LWS harmonise the outputs of national surveys ex post to create international databases. The LIS and the LWS sometimes use the outputs of the HFCS and the EU-SILC surveys for European countries.
While all the previously mentioned surveys consistently show a gender pension gap in reporting OECD countries, the extent of this gap differs across surveys (Figure 1.2). Some of the largest discrepancies can be found for Austria with a gender pension gap varying between 31% and 41% depending on the survey, Germany with a gap between 32% and 40%, Luxembourg with a gap between 40% and 50%, the Slovak Republic with a gap between 5% and 15%, and the United Kingdom with a gap between 34% and 43%.
Note: This chart shows the gender pension gap across different surveys, conducted over the same (2-year) period in each country. Countries are ranked in the same order as in Figure 1.1.
Source: OECD calculations based on the HFCS, the LIS, the LWS; Eurostat (EU-SILC).
Discrepancies across surveys may be the result of a combination of factors. These multinational surveys rely on different underlying national surveys. For instance, LIS and LWS data for Germany come from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) while HFCS data are based on the Panel on Household Finances (PHF). The definition of retirement income may potentially be different across surveys. The HFCS questionnaire explicitly requests gross income from pensions (before tax and social contributions) among the core variables that all participating countries have to collect. The LIS and LWS databases do not specify whether retirement income is gross or net. The treatment of missing values also differs across surveys, as the HFCS and the LWS (for some countries) use a multiple imputation technique unlike the LIS. Finally, surveys have sometimes been conducted at different times, although surveys have been selected here in a way to ensure that this time difference is no more than two years.
The gender pension gap assessed in Figure 1.1 is based on the LIS and complemented by data from the HFCS and the EU-SILC. The LIS already covers a large number of OECD countries and compiles data over several decades through several waves of data collection, allowing for an analysis of the trends (over different samples though).
The gender pension gap has generally narrowed over the last decades. Figure 1.3 shows that the gender pension gap has declined in most reporting OECD countries since the early 2000s, especially in Canada (by 15 percentage points), Finland (by 8 percentage points) and the United States (by 8 percentage points). The gender gap has been closing relatively slowly in a third of the reporting countries, where the gap shrank by less than 5 percentage points in nearly two decades. However, some of these countries (e.g. Denmark and the Slovak Republic) already had a relatively low gender gap in the early 2000s (less than 15%) compared to other countries, leaving them less room for improvement than in other parts of the world. Yet, in a few countries, survey data suggest the gender gap would have remained the same or slightly increased since the early 2000s (e.g. in Austria and Italy).
Note: This chart shows the gender pension gap in selected OECD countries (labelled with their ISO code) in Wave V (x-axis) and Wave X (y-axis) of the LIS, unless specified otherwise. Countries below the dotted line have experienced a decrease in the gender pension gap since Wave V (or VI) while those above have experienced an increase. ISO codes are available on the United Nation Statistics Division internet page at the following address: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49alpha.htm. Countries usually carried out the underlying survey of Wave V of the LIS between 1998 and 2002, and the underlying survey of Wave X of the LIS between 2015 and 2017. Data refer to Wave VI instead of Wave V for Luxembourg and Slovenia. Data refer to Wave IX instead of Wave X for Australia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and the Slovak Republic. Data refer to Wave XI instead of Wave X for the United Kingdom and the United States.
Source: OECD calculations based on the LIS.
Women tend to receive lower retirement income than men when considering the total of all sources of retirement income. The extent to which retirement savings arrangements (i.e. occupational and personal pension plans) contribute to the overall gender pension gap depends on the prominence of retirement savings arrangements in the overall pension system, and on the difference in the retirement income that men and women receive from these arrangements.
Currently, retirement savings plans provide a regular stream of income only to a small proportion of old-age people in many European countries (Figure 1.4). In some countries, benefits can be paid, sometimes fully, as a lump sum, which may account for the small proportion of people receiving a regular private pension at retirement (e.g. in Belgium).5 In some others, retirement savings plans were phased in only relatively recently, such as Estonia, Lithuania and the Slovak Republic that introduced second pillar pension plans after 2000 (in 2002, 2004 and 2005 respectively). Few people are already entitled to benefit payments from these arrangements. Retirement savings plans are therefore likely to have little impact on the overall gender pension gap in countries where they generate a regular income for a minority of old-age people only (whether men or women).
Note: This chart shows the proportion of men (respectively women) aged 65+ receiving a regular pension from occupational or personal plans over all men (resp. women) aged 65+. Pensioners who received a lump sum payment were not counted as receiving regular pension payments, unless they purchased an annuity. Data come from the third wave of the HFCS, primarily carried out between 2016 and 2018.
Source: OECD calculations based on the HFCS.
In some countries, the proportion of people receiving private pensions is large but differs widely between men and women, thereby contributing to the overall gender pension gap. The proportion of women aged 65+ receiving private pensions is the largest in the Netherlands (46%), but still much smaller than the proportion of men receiving private pensions (61%). The difference is also particularly large in Ireland (37% for women compared to 51% for men) and Germany (17% for women, 29% for men). More men receive private pensions than women. They therefore benefit from an additional stream of income to complement public pensions compared with women in these countries, which may contribute to the overall gender pension gap there.
Additionally, when women get a pension from retirement savings plans, this income may be lower than men’s, such as in Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. These three countries have the highest proportion of women aged 65+ receiving a regular private pensions in Europe. Women receive on average 24% less income from their retirement savings plans (occupational and personal) than men in Ireland, 36% less in the Netherlands and 44% less in Germany. This average is calculated only over individuals receiving a private pension (zeros and lump sum payments are therefore excluded).
While currently few people in some countries are receiving private pensions, this may change in the future as retirement savings arrangements are gaining prominence in many countries (OECD, 2020[3]). It is therefore essential to understand what drives the gender pension gap, in particular among retirement savings schemes.
The gender pension gap today is partly the result of different work histories between men and women and the way these differences are transferred through the different components of the pension system.
The gender pension gap is partly due to the lower proportion of women having a job compared to men. In the early 2000s, 48% of women aged between 15 and 64 were working on average in the OECD, compared to 69% of men (Figure 1.5, Panel A.1). This employment gap between men and women has been narrowing over the last decades, as more women had a job in 2018 compared to the early 2000s while the proportion of men with a job has declined over the same period. This has probably helped women to build up pension entitlements to levels that are more comparable to those of men, reducing the gender pension gap. The share of employed women is, however, still below the share of employed men on average in the OECD (50% of women compared to 66% of men).
The gender pension gap may also be the result of a historically larger proportion of women in part-time work compared to men. On average, 24% of women in the working-age population had a part-time job in 2000, compared to 7% of men in the OECD. The largest difference between men and women in part-time jobs was recorded in the Netherlands in 2000 (57% of women working part-time compared to 13% of men). The Netherlands also has one of the largest gender pension gaps (40% compared to 26% in the OECD on average), which may come from the difference in the shares of men and women in part-time jobs. Working part-time may exclude the worker from participating in pension systems in some countries. When it does not, working part-time still implies lower wages than working full-time and therefore lower pension entitlements in earnings-related pension schemes. Differences between the proportion of women and men in part-time jobs are still evident in 2018 (Figure 1.5, Panel A.2) and could contribute to the persistence of the gender pension gap in the future.
The current gender pension gap is also related to the gender wage gap. Among full-time workers, women were earning less than men on average in 2000 (Figure 1.5, Panel A.3). This gender wage gap is declining on average in the OECD, from 18% in 2000 to 13% in 2018. This decline could reduce the gender pension gap in the future. Lower differences in wages translate into lower differences in retirement income (with a time lag) if women are able to build up similar rights and save similar amounts as men during their working lives.
Other factors may contribute to the gender pension gap, such as women having shorter careers. Women’s careers are one third shorter than those of men on average (OECD, 2017[4]). These shorter careers may be the consequence of career breaks following childbirth and caring responsibilities which tend to fall more heavily on women (children, elderly).
Note: Panel A1: Circles show the employment rates of men and women in 2000 while triangles show these rates in 2018 for all OECD countries. The red circle and the red triangle show the OECD average in 2000 and 2018 respectively. Panel A2: Circles show the share of men and women in part-time employment in 2000 while triangles show these rates in 2018 for all OECD countries. The red circle and red triangle show the OECD average in 2000 and 2018 respectively. Panel A3: The gender wage gap is defined as the difference between male and female median wages divided by the male median wages. OECD37 is the simple average of the gender wage gap among OECD countries.
Source: OECD Employment database.
The way all these differences during working lives lead to different retirement income streams for men and women depends on the design of the pension system. The pension system is usually a combination of public and private programmes (OECD, 2019[5]), each reacting differently to differences during working lives (Table 1.1). The overall effect of the different factors on the gender pension gap depends on the importance of each component of the pension system.
Work status and wage conditions can directly affect the access and the entitlements in employment-related contributory pension arrangements, whether pay-as-you-go or funded. For instance, unemployment affects individuals’ entitlements from contributory public pension arrangements and savings in occupational and employment-related personal plans. Working grants pension rights to workers through contributions. Unemployment years may be counted in the formula for public pension payments (such as in France) up to a certain extent, but benefit entitlements may be lower than for people who have worked. In the funded and private pension system, access to occupational pension plans (and some personal plans) is restricted to those working. If individuals lose or quit their job (after the vesting period of pension rights), they will retain rights in defined benefit (DB) plans or assets in defined contribution (DC) plans unless they transfer these assets to another vehicle. The accrual of rights or assets in these plans may not keep up with the rights of members who are still working and paying contributions. Part-time work, lower wages, and shorter careers also reduce the entitlements from employment-related pension arrangements, although these effects could be mitigated depending on the formula of DB plans or partly offset if career breaks are compensated. For example, a DB career-average formula reduces differences in pensions related to career dynamism, but penalises more those with irregular or interrupted career patterns than a DB formula based on salaries in the best years (Lodovici et al., 2016[6]).
The effect of work status and wage conditions on the access and the possibility to save in a plan is in theory less automatic in a voluntary personal plan than in an employment-related one. Men and women can usually open a voluntary personal plan whether they are employed or not, working part-time or full-time, unconditional of their level of earnings or their time in employment.
By contrast, differences in careers between men and women increase the odds of women falling into poverty in retirement and relying on the protection of non-contributory programmes relative to men. Eligibility to these programmes may be subject to certain criteria in some countries (such as a certain number of years of residency, a certain number of contribution years to the public system). Some of these programmes may assess all income sources (such as social assistance that may be reduced depending on other retirement incomes) and may sometimes depend on other assets too.
This section looks into other factors, beyond labour market inequalities, that can create a gap in retirement income, focusing on retirement savings arrangements, and therefore abstracting from public pensions. It first shows that women participate less than men in retirement savings plans, even after controlling for the gender employment gap. It then presents how the gap in rights and assets widens progressively during the accumulation phase among those participating in retirement savings plans. It finally explains how the gender gap during the accumulation phase can worsen at retirement.
1.5.1. Women participate less in retirement savings plans than men
The first step for building up savings for retirement is to be a member of a retirement savings plan. Individuals can voluntarily participate in a pension plan in most OECD countries if they wish. When they work, men and women may also be automatically enrolled in occupational plans or may have the possibility of joining the plan set up by their employers under certain conditions. The establishment of occupational plans is voluntary for employers in some countries (e.g. the United States), mandatory in others (e.g. Switzerland) or mandatory only in some sectors (e.g. the Netherlands). Individuals may also be members of several pension plans, occupational and personal.
While people may have several ways of accessing retirement savings plans (i.e. through work or independently), men tend to more commonly have a plan than women among European countries (Table 1.2).
The proportion of women with savings in a personal plan is usually close to but below the proportion of men with personal plans in Europe. More men have a personal plan than women in 14 out of 18 European countries. In 10 of these 14 countries, the difference in coverage is, however, below 2 percentage points. The largest difference was recorded in the Netherlands where 19% of women have a personal plan compared to 28% of men. By contrast, more women own a voluntary personal plan than men in four countries: Estonia, Finland, France and Latvia.
The proportion of women covered by an occupational plan is lower than men in most European countries, with Finland being one of the exceptions.6 The coverage of women in occupational plans is comparable to men in Finland (around 85%), as participation in earnings-related pension plans (TyEL and other plans) is mandatory for public and private sector workers, farmers and self-employed individuals. Additionally, the employment gap between men and women is smaller in Finland (5 percentage points) than in the OECD on average (16 percentage points).
The gender employment gap accounts by itself for the difference in the proportion of men and women covered by an occupational plan in some countries, but not all. Calculating the proportion of men (respectively women) having an occupational pension plan over the employed population (instead of the working-age population) shows whether the gender employment gap has a differentiated impact. The difference between the proportion of men and women covered by occupational plans remains almost the same in Austria, France, Ireland and Italy for instance, even after controlling for the gender employment gap in these countries (Figure 1.6). By contrast, the difference in coverage declines in Germany (from 7 to 6 percentage points), Luxembourg (from 4 to 2 percentage points) and especially in the Netherlands where the gender gap in occupational plan coverage nearly disappears after controlling for the gender employment gap. While women were already more often covered by an occupational or employment-related pension plan than men among the working-age population in the Slovak Republic and Slovenia, this difference in favour of women further increases after adjusting for the gender employment gap. In Slovenia, this could be due to the fact that participation in an employment-related pension plan is voluntary for all employees except those in arduous and hazardous jobs and civil servants who tend to be more often women (OECD, 2017[7]).
Note: This chart shows the difference (in percentage points) in the proportions of men and women covered by an occupational or employment-related pension plan. These proportions are calculated over the working-age population and over the employed population (to account for the gender employment gap). Calculations are based on data available in Wave 3 of the HFCS for all countries except Finland (Wave 2).
Source: OECD calculations based on the HFCS.
The participation in an occupational plan may vary across sectors when the legislation does not require all employers to establish a plan on behalf of their employees. Access to an occupational plan then depends on the willingness of employers to set up a plan for their employees. A study from the Pew Charitable Trusts (2017[8]) found that full-time workers in some sectors (e.g. material moving) in the United States were more likely to have access to occupational plans than full-time workers in other sectors (e.g. wholesale and retail trade). Some employers may voluntarily set up occupational plans as part of a remuneration package to attract and retain skilled people.
In some countries, the difference in coverage of occupational plans between men and women probably results from the underrepresentation of women in sectors more likely to provide access to occupational plans. The proportion of women working in a given sector is inversely correlated with the coverage rate of occupational plans in this sector in a number of countries (Figure 1.7).7 Women tend to work in sectors where fewer individuals are covered by an occupational plan such as education (code “P” in the NACE Rev. 2 Classification) or human health and social work activities (code “Q”). Women are underrepresented in manufacturing activities (code “C”) where employers may provide wider access to occupational plans (such as in Belgium and Ireland).
Note: The sectors follow the NACE Rev. 2 Classification. "A" stands for "Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing"; "B" for "Mining and Quarrying"; "C" for "Manufacturing"; "D" for "Electricity, Gas, Steam and Air Conditioning supply"; "E" for "Water supply; Sewerage, Waste Management and Remediation Activities"; "F" for "Construction"; "G" for "Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles"; "H" for "Transportation and Storage"; "I" for "Accommodation and Food Service Activities"; "J" for "Information and Communication"; "K" for "Financial and Insurance Activities"; "L" for "Real Estate Activities"; "M" for "Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities"; "N" for "Administrative and Support Service Activities"; "O" for "Public Administration And Defence; Compulsory Social Security"; "P" for "Education"; "Q" for "Human Health and Social Work Activities"; "R" for "Arts, Entertainment and Recreation"; "S" for "Other Service Activities"; "T" for "Activities of Households as Employers; Undifferentiated Goods- and Services-producing Activities of Households for own use"; "U" for "Activities of Extraterritorial Organisations and Bodies".
Source: OECD calculations based on the HFCS.
Women may face more barriers to joining occupational or employment-related plans when the access is subject to employment or earning conditions. In the United States, if employers decide to set up an occupational plan for their employees, they must provide access to this plan at least to all employees aged 21 and over and having 1 year or more of service (1 000 hours of work during the year). It may be more difficult for part-time workers – more often women - to qualify unless employers set wider access conditions. In other countries where participation in a plan is mandatory, access to the plan may be limited to those working in a formal job. Women who are more likely to be in informal work than men in Latin America (ILO, 2018[9]) could be left out from these mandatory plans (e.g. in Chile). Minimum earning requirements for joining a plan might also exclude women more than men from occupational plans. In Australia for instance, employers have to contribute to a plan on behalf of employees earning at least AUD 450 per month before tax. There is also an earnings floor in the United Kingdom to qualify for automatic enrolment in a plan. Women might be more penalised than men as they earn less than men on average. In the United Kingdom, 23% of employed women do not meet the qualifying criteria for automatic enrolment, compared to 12% of male workers (Pensions Policy Institute, 2020[10]).
The current difference in the proportion of men and women having a pension plan is likely to lead to differences in the proportion of retired men and women benefitting from retirement income in the future.
1.5.2. A gender gap in pension assets widens progressively during the accumulation phase
Women with retirement savings plans have historically accrued less in their plans than men in almost all European countries. Figure 1.8 shows that men hold more than twice the pension assets of women in Austria and Latvia (in voluntary personal plans). Women would have approximately the same amount of retirement savings only in the Slovak Republic and Slovenia among the reporting countries.
Note: The gender gap is defined as the difference between men and women's assets in all DC and personal retirement savings plans and the present value of all expected future benefit payments from DB plans as a percentage of men's, among asset owners. This indicator is calculated over the working-age population, based on data available in Wave 3 of the HFCS for all countries except Belgium and Finland (Wave 2). Data for Estonia, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania refer to assets in voluntary personal plans only.
Source: OECD calculations based on the HFCS.
This gap between the pension assets that men and women accumulate first emerges in the 25-34 year group and tends to widen from that point onwards. At the early stages of their careers, women and men have almost the same amount of assets (with a 2% difference in favour of men’s pension assets) on average in a selection of European countries (Figure 1.9). The value of women’s pension plans starts falling behind when they are between 25 and 34 years old. Women aged between 25 and 34 have 8% less than men in their pension plans. This gap widens between 35 and 44 years old when women have 30% less in their pension accounts than men. This analysis is based on the pension assets of different cohorts in 2017. An analysis of the gap in pension assets over time for the same cohort would help to confirm the findings based on different cohorts.8
Note: This chart shows the average amount of assets in DC and personal retirement savings plans and the present value of all expected future benefit payments from DB plans for men and women among asset owners in a group of OECD countries on average (on the left-hand side). The chart also shows the difference between this average (of average pension assets) for men and for women relatively to men (on the right-hand side). The group of countries included in the calculations includes: Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy (except for the age group 16-24), Latvia, Lithuania (except for the age group 16-24), Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal (except for the age group 16-24), the Slovak Republic and Slovenia. This indicator is calculated over the working-age population, based on data available in Wave 3 of the HFCS for all countries except Belgium and Finland (Wave 2).
Source: OECD calculations based on the HFCS.
This gap in pension assets may be partly due to career breaks for parenting purposes between 25 and 44 years old (Mcguinness and Pyper, 2018[11]).9 Additionally and because of the gender wage gap, a similar contribution rate for men and women would lead to lower savings overall for women compared to men.10
The gap in pension assets reaches its peak at the eldest ages (34% between 55 and 64 years old). This gap is the result of past differences in assets accumulated. The difference in asset values – in absolute monetary terms - widens over time as the interest earned compounds the value of the assets. Contributions are invested and generate investment income. Larger pension pots would earn more than smaller pots.
Different investment strategies between men and women could also explain differences in investment rates of return and thus in assets accumulated, ceteris paribus. Women could be more risk averse than men and may invest their assets more conservatively. When looking at investment allocations of both men and women outside retirement assets, women tend to hold more cash and money market funds – relatively lower risk investment – than men who hold rather stocks and shares in mutual funds that are riskier (Garnick, 2016[12]). Chapter 2 looks further into the risk aversion of men and women and the implications in terms of investment strategies that men and women select. A potential difference in the choice of investment strategy could contribute to differences in retirement savings outcomes, especially in a context of a growing prominence of DC plans where plan members make investment choices.
1.5.3. How the gender gap in retirement savings during the accumulation phase can materialise further at retirement
The amount of retirement income of men and women could also depend on their choices for the pay-out phase. Individuals can choose among different types of payments from retirement savings plans, such as lump sums, life annuities, programmed withdrawals, deferred life annuities or a combination of several options. If men and women select different pay-out options, this could have an impact on the income they receive from retirement savings plans.
Women may be less likely to receive a regular income from retirement savings arrangements – thus increasing the risk of a gap in retirement income between men and women - when annuity payments are conditional on eligibility criteria (such as a minimum contribution period). Men may be more likely to meet a criterion based on the length of the contribution period than women for example, as women have lower employment rates and shorter careers than men.11
Even if men and women both can and do choose to receive a regular retirement income through a life annuity, women may still receive lower pension payments than men for the same level of retirement savings if the price of the annuity takes into account the higher life expectancies of women compared to men.12,13 As the previous section of this Chapter showed that women tend to have lower retirement savings than men when they reach retirement, the use of gendered mortality tables to price annuities could be expected to widen even further the difference in retirement income for men and women.
Differences in the pay-out phase between men and women could be expected to shrink in the future as some gaps between men and women in the labour market (e.g. gender employment gap, gender wage gap) slowly fade. Women may be more likely to reach retirement age with similar retirement assets as men in the long run.
This analysis confirms the well-documented existence of a gap in retirement income that men and women receive, the gender pension gap. The overall pension gap may partly reflect that women receive income from a retirement savings plan complementing their public pensions less often than men in some countries. And when they do, this income is generally lower than men’s income.
This gap in retirement income is partly the result of past differences in labour market outcomes between men and women, such as the lower share of women employed, their shorter careers and their lower wages during their careers. These differences automatically affect savings in occupational plans set up by employers and potentially savings in personal plans too.
On top of these, women are less likely to participate in a funded pension plan during their career. This difference is partly due to the fact that women work in areas where workers are less likely to be covered by a funded pension plan in a number of countries. Women are also likely to accumulate a lower balance than men during their working lives. The gap in retirement assets appears when women are aged 25 to 34 and widens thereafter. This is when they are most likely to take a career break for parenting. Differences in retirement assets are likely to compound over time as these assets are invested in financial markets and yield investment returns. This gap may grow further when retiring depending on the pay-out options available to women and their features. Annuities in some countries take into account the fact that women will live longer than men and lead to lower retirement income payments for women compared to men, even for the same amount of accumulated assets.
References
[12] Garnick, D. (2016), Income Insights: Gender Retirement Gap.
[13] Herrerías, R. and G. Zamarripa (2017), Determinants of Density of Contribution for the Mexican Pension System.
[9] ILO (2018), Women and men in the informal economy: a statistical picture.
[6] Lodovici, M. et al. (2016), The gender pension gap: differences between mothers and women without children.
[11] Mcguinness, F. and D. Pyper (2018), The Gender Pay Gap, http://www.parliament.uk/commons-library%7cintranet.parliament.uk/commons-library%[email protected]%7c@commonslibrary.
[3] OECD (2020), Pension Markets in Focus.
[5] OECD (2019), Pensions at a Glance 2019: OECD and G20 Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/b6d3dcfc-en.
[1] OECD (2018), OECD Pensions Outlook 2018, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/pens_outlook-2018-en.
[7] OECD (2017), Government at a Glance, OECD Publishing, https://doi.org/10.1787/gov_glance-2017-en.
[2] OECD (2017), Preventing Ageing Unequally, OECD Publishing, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264279087-en.
[4] OECD (2017), The Pursuit of Gender Equality: An Uphill Battle, OECD Publishing, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264281318-en.
[10] Pensions Policy Institute (2020), The Underpensioned Index.
[8] The Pew Charitable Trusts (2017), Survey Highlights Worker Perspectives on Barriers to Retirement Saving.
Several multinational household surveys request information on retirement income that individuals receive. The way this information is collected varies across surveys, however. Some surveys already include a variable capturing the total retirement income while this variable can be created in other surveys by adding up the different retirement income streams. Annex Table 1.A.1 summarises the definitions of total retirement income and what this flow includes in four surveys: the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), the Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS) and the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC).
The HFCS does not include a variable combining all the retirement income streams. The HFCS includes two main variables instead: “gross income from public pensions” and “gross income from occupational and private pension plans”. Gross income from public pensions includes old age pensions, anticipated old-age pensions (i.e. regular payments to those who retire before the standard retirement age), partial retirement pensions (i.e. regular payments to those who only receive a portion of their full pension because they continue to work), survivor’s pensions and disability pensions (i.e. regular payments to those below the standard retirement age who suffers from a disability impairing their ability to work or earn the minimum in the legislation). Gross income from public pensions also includes income from public pension systems abroad. Gross income from occupational and private pension plans covers income received from occupational pension schemes and pensions and annuities received in the form of interest or dividend income from individual private insurance plans.
The LIS database includes a variable on pensions called “pensions”. This variable measures retirement income from all pillars (public, occupational and personal), all types (universal, assistance and insurance) and all functions (old-age, disability and survivors).
The LWS database also has a similar variable on pensions, also called “pensions” like in the LIS database. This variable is also supposed to cover public non-contributory, public contributory and private pensions.
The EU-SILC survey defines several variables relating to retirement income such as: old-age benefits, survivor’s benefits, disability benefits and pensions from individual private plans. All these variables are collected on gross and net bases.
Lump sum payments are not included in retirement income in these surveys except in the EU-SILC where they are reported under “old-age benefits”.
Notes
← 1. This analysis focuses on the differences of retirement income between men and women and does not touch upon the overall level and adequacy of the retirement income of men and women.
← 2. Differences between men and women could also relate to the cumulative amounts received by men and women over the whole retirement period (gap in pension wealth).
← 3. There are differences in life expectancy between men and women across countries. If older cohorts tend to have less retirement income and women live longer than men, this cohort effect will be captured within the measure. In that case, differences across countries in the gender gap in life expectancy could explain some of the differences in the gender pension gap across countries (on top of other factors).
← 4. The elderly population is defined as people aged 65 and over. Some household surveys – especially those on the whole population - may exclude people living in collective households and in institutions, such as the elderly in nursing homes or old people’s homes. Institutions providing long-term care (excluding hospitals) host more women than men aged 65+ in all OECD countries. Excluding residents of these institutions may marginally distort the gender pension gap as they represent between 0% and 11% of all individuals aged 65+ across OECD countries according to the OECD Long-Term Care Resources and Utilisation database. Lithuania had the largest proportion of individuals aged 65+ receiving formal long-term care in institutions (other than hospitals) among OECD countries in 2018.
← 5. In Belgium, people can receive benefits from their occupational plans as a single lump sum, as an annuity (fixed or lifetime) or as a combination of both. If the annuity that people could get is lower than EUR 659.79 annually, benefits have to be paid as a single lump sum.
← 6. The Slovak Republic and Slovenia are other examples where the proportion of women covered by an occupational plan is higher than the proportion of men.
← 7. The regression line in Figure 1.7 does not take into account the differences in the overall number of people (men and women) working in each sector.
← 8. Figure 1.9 probably includes both an age effect (i.e. the gap in pension assets grows as people age) and a generational effect (i.e. men and women in the last age group were born at a different time than those in the first age group). Further analysis would be needed to disentangle the age and generational effects.
← 9. McGuinness and Pyper (2018[11]) show that the gender pay gap between men and women grows after the birth of a first child in the United Kingdom.
← 10. Different effective contribution rates by men and women could affect the gender gap in pension assets or entitlements. This dimension is left aside from this analysis due to lack of available data.
← 11. This is the case for instance in Mexico (Herrerías and Zamarripa, 2017[13]).
← 12. Women would however have the same pension wealth as men during retirement as they would receive lower pension payments from life annuity products, but for a longer period than men.
← 13. Since 2012, the European Court of Justice has forbidden insurance companies from taking into account gender when pricing their annuity products. This rule implies that differences in life expectancy will not lead to lower benefit payments for women than for men for the same amount of accumulated assets in European countries.