Housewives never retire!? Gender biases in popular sample definitions for studies on the elderly

Carla Rowold
Additional contact information
Carla Rowold: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2024-025, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: While research emphasized the risk of gendered sample selection bias among the elderly decades ago, the empirical literature on old-age inequalities remains largely unaware of it. This research note addresses this issue by investigating gendered sample selectivity for individuals aged 65 or older employing two common sample criteria: self-reported retirement status and pension receipt in countries covered by the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Findings show that more than half of older women are excluded when these criteria are applied. Gender selection bias varies widely across countries and is less pronounced in post-socialist or social-democratic welfare states. Visualizing work trajectories by sample status reveals that women with long unpaid care work periods and men with high self-employment, unemployment, and extended education levels are particularly likely to be excluded. Studies employing such sample criteria risk underestimating gender inequalities in pensions, health, and life satisfaction. The implications are severe for Southern, conservative, and liberal welfare states, and for cross-country comparisons, where sample bias often goes undetected due to its variability across contexts. While this article cannot offer a universal recommendation for sample definitions, it aims to promote less biased sample conceptualizations in studies of the elderly population.

Keywords: bias; gender; life cycle; old age; pension schemes; retirement; retirement pensions; samples (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-gen, nep-lab and nep-mac
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/4kq5e_v1 (text/html)
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2024-025.pdf (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2024-025

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2024-025

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Wilhelm ().