The effect of family formation on the build-up of pension rights among minority ethnic groups and native women in Belgium

Abstract

Gender penalties in pension outcomes are widely acknowledged and have been documented for majority populations in various settings. A recurring finding is that the gendered impact of family formation on work–care trajectories adversely affects women's accumulation of pension rights over the lifecourse relative to men. Although maternal employment is particularly low in migrant populations, few papers have explicitly addressed pension protection of migrant women. Using longitudinal microdata from the Belgian Social Security Registers, we analyse whether entry into parenthood differentially affected the build-up of first pillar pension rights of working-age migrant women compared to natives between 1998 and 2010, further distinguishing by origin group and migrant generation. The results show that native women are most likely to build up pension rights through full-time employment both before and after parenthood. In contrast, first-generation women and women of Turkish and Moroccan origin are more likely to build up pension rights though assimilated periods or rely on derived pension rights after parenthood, even when controlling for type of pension build-up before parenthood. We conclude that policies reinforcing individualisation of pension rights based on employment or decreasing the importance of derived rights may erode pension protection of groups having limited access to the labour market, and require co-ordination with employment and family policies that support the combination of work and care responsibilities.

Mothers and Parental Leave in Belgium: Social Inequalities in Eligibility and Uptake

“…For example, research reports a double disadvantage for migrant women, both in terms of gender and ethnicity. They face more difficulties than migrant men but also compared to native women in securing stable labour market positions (Mussino & Duvander, 2016;Neels, De Wachter, & Peeters, 2018;OECD, 2017). Kil et al (2017) and Maes et al (2021) also document a larger decrease in activity and employment levels after the transition to parenthood of women with a migration background than among native women in Belgium, which is related to the differential stability of employment trajectories of migrant and native women.…”

Path-Dependencies in Employment Trajectories Around Motherhood: Comparing Native Versus Second-Generation Migrant Women in Belgium

“…In addition to the societal importance of migrant origin mothers' labour force participation, a reduced labour force participation after family formation has also implications for women's financial independence, future labour market trajectories and social security (e.g. pensions) (Koelet et al 2015;Neels et al 2018).…”

Is There a Child Penalty in Pensions? The Role of Caregiver Credits in the French Retirement System

“…However, some recent work examines these issues from a life-cycle perspective, showing that cumulative gains are significantly reduced by fertility (Adda et al 2017). The impact of maternity on life-cycle earnings is usually reflected in lower pension entitlements, as shown by a growing body of literature (Davies et al 2000;Brugiavini et al 2011;Sefton et al 2011;Möhring 2015;Peeters and De Tavernier 2015;Neels et al 2018;Rutledge et al 2017). However, the link between pensions and earnings is not direct, nor is it obvious.…”

“…It depends on how the retirement system calculates the pension on the basis of individual careers (Sefton et al 2011;Möhring 2015). It also depends on how mothers choose to acquire pension rights after childbirth, according to their characteristics (see, e.g., Neels et al 2018 for a comparison between Belgian natives and migrant women), and on how the retirement system takes children into account when calculating pensions by means of the so-called caregiver credits (Möhring 2018).…”