The Treatment of Couples by the Pension System: Survivor's Pensions and Pension Splitting

Bonnet, Carole; Hourriez, Jean-Michel; Depledge, Roger

doi:10.3917/pope.1201.0147

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Consequently, we empirically support the arguments of various authors that highlight the benefits of such systems for women ( e.g. Bonnet and Hourriez 2012; Jankowski 2011).…”

Section: Summary and Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…Moreover, such a regulation is consistent with the logic of the equal pooling of resources acquired during marriage, with pensions being a ‘postponed wage’. Even though, for some time, ‘splitting’ has been proposed in many countries (for an early statement, see Burkhauser 1982), so far it only exists in a few of countries, where it is only partially enacted and is often on a voluntary basis (Bonnet and Hourriez 2012). This policy suggestion of splitting might be even more relevant for countries other than Belgium, given the Belgian divorce pension's qualification as a ‘best practice’ (Horstmann and Hüllsman 2009), despite the higher prevalence of poverty among divorced women after retirement.…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Lifecourses, pensions and poverty among elderly women in Belgium: interactions between family history, work history and pension regulations

Peeters

Tavernier

2014

Ageing and Society

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The precarious financial situation of many elderly women in developed countries is well established. Nevertheless, in-depth insight into the persistent vulnerability of this group remains largely absent. In this article, we demonstrate how a specific focus on the interaction between work history, family history and pension regulations can provide greater insight into the mechanisms that produce poverty among elderly women in Belgium. To that end, we make use of register data on some 9,000 women aged 65–71. Data on the poverty risk of these women is linked to career and family data, spanning over 45 years. We find that pension policy can indeed account for the higher poverty risk of some groups of elderly women (e.g. divorcees) as compared to others (e.g. widows). Similarly, pension policy can, to a large extent, directly or indirectly explain how previous lifecourse events, such as marital dissolution or childbirth, affect old-age poverty risk. However, our study also reveals some unexpected findings. Most notably, pension regulations fail to account for the beneficial situation of married women. Indeed, our analyses suggest that capital (income) may prove more decisive than pension rights in explaining the low poverty risk of married women when compared to other marital groups. Drawing from our findings, we conclude with some suggestions as to where pension policy should go from here.

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“…Consequently, we empirically support the arguments of various authors that highlight the benefits of such systems for women ( e.g. Bonnet and Hourriez 2012; Jankowski 2011).…”

Section: Summary and Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lifecourses, pensions and poverty among elderly women in Belgium: interactions between family history, work history and pension regulations

Peeters

Tavernier

2014

Ageing and Society

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“…A typical example of such derived rights is the survivor's pension, which is designed to protect the surviving spouse from old-age poverty following the death of the male breadwinner. While divorce can also entail a similar loss of income that results in old-age poverty, in most welfare states, the risk of divorce is not buffered to the same degree as the risk of the death of a spouse (Bonnet and Hourriez, 2012). Obviously, divorce and separation were not yet widespread when the modern welfare state came into being at the end of the 19th century, or when it was consolidated after the Second World War (Pierson, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2022

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Germany is one of the few countries in Europe that has implemented a system of ‘divorce splitting’. Under this system, the pension credits that spouses have accumulated during their marriage are combined and then split equally between them upon divorce. This study examines how divorce affects public pension entitlements in Germany, and how these patterns are influenced by the system of divorce splitting. The data for our analysis comes from SHARE-RV, a direct linkage of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) with administrative data of the research data centre of the German Pension Insurance Fund (Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund). The data include information on the beneficiaries’ monthly earnings and employment biographies, as well as on their pension entitlements and the credits they received through divorce splitting. The results of the analysis, which was restricted to West German men and women born between 1935 and 1954, reveal that there are large gender gaps in public pension benefit levels. However, the investigation also shows that single and divorced West German women have larger personal pension entitlements than their married or widowed counterparts. Furthermore, the public pension entitlements of divorced men and women in West Germany are very similar. This can be attributed partially to the divorce-splitting system, which tends to increase the pension benefits of divorced women, while reducing the pension benefits of their male counterparts.

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“…However, changes in family behaviours will also have adverse impacts on the incomes of retired women. The number of separations and of non-marital unions is growing (Bonnet and Hourriez, 2012 b ), so the future economic independence of elderly women will be more strongly linked to their own pension entitlements than to their husband's income or to a survivor's pension (reserved for married couples only) if widowed.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 14 Survivor's pensions and the treatment of divorce raise many questions, especially in a context of pension reforms (see Bonnet and Hourriez, 2012b)…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender pension gaps along the distribution: An application to the French case

Bonnet

Meurs

2020

Journal of Pension Economics and Finance

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In this article we estimate the relative contributions to the gender pension gap of career duration and income earned at different points along the pension income distribution, as well as the role played by minimum pensions and other partly or wholly non-contributory policies in reducing this gap. Our research covers all retirees in France in 2012 employed in the public or private sector at least once in their lifetimes. We first highlight that at every point in the distribution, the gender pension gap is wider for private-sector retirees than for those in the public sector. This is because public sector careers are less fragmented and because the calculation of the public sector reference wage does not penalize career interruptions so heavily. This relative advantage of women in the public sector is probably an additional factor explaining their over-representation in this sector. Applying the decomposition method proposed by Firpo et al. (2007, 2009), we show that composition differences in the gender pension gap are essentially due to differences in contribution periods and wages, with a smaller effect of career duration in the public sector than in the private. In the first deciles, the gap can be attributed largely to differences in career duration. This effect gradually weakens, and differences in the reference wage become the main explanation. We also show that minimum contributory pensions play an extremely important role in limiting the gender pension gap in the first deciles, essentially in the private sector. Last, we show that in all cases the unexplained share of the pension gap is substantial only at the bottom of the distribution and, to a lesser extent, in the top decile. The unexplained share is generally smaller than the explained one and favours men.

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The Treatment of Couples by the Pension System: Survivor's Pensions and Pension Splitting

Cited by 7 publications

References 4 publications

Lifecourses, pensions and poverty among elderly women in Belgium: interactions between family history, work history and pension regulations

Lifecourses, pensions and poverty among elderly women in Belgium: interactions between family history, work history and pension regulations

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

Gender pension gaps along the distribution: An application to the French case

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