The gender pension gap in Germany: is divorce a gender-equaliser?

Kreyenfeld, Michaela; Schmauk, Sarah; Mika, Tatjana

doi:10.1017/s0144686x21001513

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…This underlines the insufficiency of the pension system to prevent the reproduction of gender inequalities arising over the life course in old age. As an exception, I find evidence of women profiting from the splitting of couples' pension claims upon divorce (in line with Kreyenfeld et al 2023). Women's better pension returns compared to men's in life courses with longer divorce spells reduce the gender gap in public pensions by two percentage points (expectation 4.2 confirmed).…”

Section: Step Ii: Decomposition Of the Gender Pension Gapsmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Fasang et al (2013) found a negative impact of the duration of being married on West German and British women's retirement income even when controlling for the employment history. Kreyenfeld et al (2023) highlight the impact of splitting pension rights resulting in divorce being a 'gender equaliser' for public pension inequality in West Germany. Mika and Czaplicki (2017) find a more modest motherhood penalty when considering childcare benefits for West Germany, suggesting how the childcare benefits compensate for maternal employment interruptions in the public pension system.…”

Section: Theoretical and Institutional Background 21 Empirical Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Differences in gender pension gaps in public and private pensions in West Germany: what role do work-family life courses play?

Rowold

2024

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Even though Gender Pension Gaps (GPG) surpass gender wage gaps in most European countries, we know less about how they emerge and relate to gendered life-course inequalities.This study contributes by applying a life-course-sensitive decomposition to linked surveyregister data for Germany (SHARE-RV), decomposing gender gaps in public and private pensions based on common work-family life courses. It considers the interdependencies of employment, family life, and earning positions over the life course, relevant due to pension privatization in Europe.GPGs occur because privileged life courses (stable civil servant careers for public and highincome employment for private pensions) yield high pensions but are almost exclusively accessible by fathers. Gender differences in access to high-income careers for parents drive the GPG in private pensions more than the gap in public pensions. The study underscores the future risk of high GPGs given the persistently high Gender Wage Gap and pension privatization in Germany.

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Section: Step Ii: Decomposition Of the Gender Pension Gapsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Theoretical and Institutional Background 21 Empirical Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in gender pension gaps in public and private pensions in West Germany: what role do work-family life courses play?

Rowold

2024

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“…Unfortunately, widowed and never-married individuals cannot be distinguished. This is a rather small problem for widowed individuals, as we would expect them to have similar individual public oldage pension incomes as married individuals (Kreyenfeld et al, 2022). However, we do not know how never-married individuals' income histories develop and if they might have lower or higher pension incomes compared to the remaining sample.…”

Section: Independent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…This gendered division of labour seems to be the root of the problem, as even cohabiting women still reduce their working hours after childbirth in Germany. In the case of separation, these women are at high risk of experiencing old-age poverty, as 'divorce-splitting' does not apply to them (Kreyenfeld et al, 2022).…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who receives most? Gendered consequences of divorce on public pension income in West Germany and Sweden

Schmauk,

Kridahl

2024

Ageing and Society

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Sweden and West Germany have had persistently high divorce rates in recent decades, but these two welfare states were differently equipped to mitigate the economic consequences of divorce for individual security in old age: Sweden followed a gender-equal policy approach to enable women and men to achieve economic autonomy, while West Germany, following the male-breadwinner model, introduced the system of ‘divorce-splitting’ to account for differences in women's and men's income. Against this background, this study uses large-scale register data from the German Public Pension Fund and the Swedish population registers to examine how divorce is related to the monthly public old-age pension income of women and men. The main comparison groups are divorced and (re)married individuals who entered retirement between 2013 and 2018. We descriptively show annual income histories from ages 20 to 65, and calculate monthly public old-age pension income with respect to lifetime income and pension regulations, such as the supplements/deductions for ‘divorce-splitting’. Multiple ordinary least square regression models further examine how family status relates to monthly public old-age pension income by gender. The results reveal that women and men in Sweden experience similar working histories, although women's incomes are lower. This is also reflected in women still having lower pension incomes than men. However, divorced and married women show comparable pension incomes, while divorced men receive approximately 26 per cent less pension income than married men. In West Germany, divorced women have significantly higher pension incomes than married women. The system of ‘divorce-splitting’ increases women's and decreases men's pension incomes, which seems to equalise their pension incomes. However, both stay below a married man's pension income. The findings indicate economic inequality in public old-age pension income by family status in Sweden and West Germany.

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“…Thus, the care benefits in Germany do not reproduce previous (gendered) disadvantages in the labour market (Horstmann et al 2009). Moreover, in the case of divorce, partners split their pension entitlements in Germany but not in Italy, that is entitlements are transferred from the partner with higher to the one with lower claims, which generally benefits women (Kreyenfeld, Schmauk, and Mika 2022). Finally, women in Germany benefit slightly more from the various redistributive elements in the pension system, whereas in Italy men tend to be favoured (suggested by gender gap in replacement rate).…”

Section: Family Policies and Gender Normsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life-course-sensitive analysis of group inequalities: Combining Sequence Analysis with the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition

Rowold¹,

Struffolino²,

Fasang³

2022

Preprint

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This paper improves the understanding of how prior life-courses that unfold over several decades relate to inequalities between groups in old age. Economic inequality in old age results from many processes that unfold over individuals’ prior life-courses in given institutional settings. With population aging, such economic inequalities in mature adulthood and old age become increasingly relevant. We propose a step wise process combining the strengths of Multichannel Sequence Analysis to analyse life-courses with the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, which has long been established to analyse group inequalities in outcomes. To illustrate the proposed procedure, we apply it to the case of Gender Pension Gaps in Italy and West Germany. Our analysis reveals that a large part of the gap in both countries is due to highly gender-specific work-family patterns; male-typical life courses receive higher average pension income while female-typical life courses are worse rewarded. On the other hand, only a minor share of the gap is associated with different pension rewards of men and women with the same work-family life course pattern. Thus, we do not find evidence for redistributional measures of pension systems (e.g. care benefits) leading to higher pension incomes of women compared to men within the same life course clusters and thus to a significant reduction of the Gender Pension Gap. We contribute to the literatures on gender inequality, life-course processes, and comparative analysis of old age pensions by showing how combined work and family life-courses lead to different gender pension gaps in two countries.

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The gender pension gap in Germany: is divorce a gender-equaliser?

Cited by 6 publications

References 43 publications

Differences in gender pension gaps in public and private pensions in West Germany: what role do work-family life courses play?

Differences in gender pension gaps in public and private pensions in West Germany: what role do work-family life courses play?

Who receives most? Gendered consequences of divorce on public pension income in West Germany and Sweden

Life-course-sensitive analysis of group inequalities: Combining Sequence Analysis with the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition

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