Gender Differences in Retirement in a Welfare State with High Female Labour Market Participation and Competing Exit Pathways

Abstract

In this article, we analyse whether and how, in the context of high female labour market participation and competing exit pathways, Finnish women's retirement differs from men's. We test for the influence of gendered life courses, social stratification, late career vulnerability and sector.Using data from the Finnish Centre for Pensions, we created individual sequences of monthly income statuses between ages 57 and 65 for a cohort born in 1948 (N = 55,971). Following sequence analysis, we identified eight distinct trajectory clusters that represent the variety of labour market withdrawal through the competing exit pathways. We linked these clusters to a set of sociodemographic background variables from Finnish Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data (FLEED). We find that women's retirement trajectories do not differ substantially from men's, but that the factors affecting the take-up of those trajectories show significant differences. Marital status, education, income and especially public sector employment play a greater role in determining the timing and mode of women's retirement. The findings suggest that women's retirement is different because their marital status, education and income has a stronger effect on their attachment to the labour market and because they work in particular female-dominated occupations. 24

Extended working lives and late-career destabilisation: A longitudinal study of Finnish register data

“…This might be partly due to women being less likely to exit through 'Early retirement'. Inclusive welfare-state institutions have promoted Finnish women's high labour-market participation over their life courses, and their high labour-market attachment in late careers has contributed to women retiring relatively late (Riekhoff & Järnefelt, 2017). It is likely that gender differences are smaller in Finland than in liberal welfare states, where women's employment rates are equally high while late careers are more vulnerable, but larger than in continental welfare states where women are more likely to reside outside the labour market or exit the labour market earlier (Calvo, Madero-Cabib & Staudinger, 2017;Fasang, 2012).…”

“…Lower job mobility among women might be due to the types of jobs women typically hold in Finland. Occupations are strongly segregated by gender, with women dominating employment in public social, health and education sector (Riekhoff & Järnefelt, 2017). These jobs usually are stable and retirement options in the public sector have been relatively more generous, thereby providing little incentives to change jobs in the late career.…”

“…This effect is expected to be stronger for higher-educated workers. Finally, due to the high labour-market participation rate among women, gender differences in late-career complexity in the Finnish context are expected to be smaller than were hypothesised based on findings from other countries (Riekhoff & Järnefelt, 2017). Moreover, in light of a rise in educational attainment, especially among women, it is possible that there will be interaction effects between gender and education in the destabilisation of careers across cohorts.…”

“…Various studies have shown that those who work until age 63 or later are a mixed group and work longer for different reasons (Järnefelt, 2010;Riekhoff & Järnefelt, 2017;Tuominen, 2013). This group includes both higher-educated women with relatively lower incomes working in the public sector, as well as higher-educated men with higher incomes working in the private sector.…”

Carrots, sticks and old-age retirement.A review of the literature on the effects of the 2005 and 2017 pensionreforms in Finland

“…Instead, women with higher income seemed to use the accelerated accrual rate more often than men. (Nivalainen & Järnefelt, 2017;Riekhoff & Järnefelt, 2017.) It is difficult, therefore, to determine the overall effect of the 2005 reform on gender differences.…”