Gender Differences in Pension Investment: The Role of Biased Advice

Claudia Curi (), Andreas Dibiasi (), Matteo Ploner () and Mirco Tonin ()
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Claudia Curi: Free University of Bozen/Bolzano
Andreas Dibiasi: Free University of Bozen/Bolzano
Matteo Ploner: University of Trento
Mirco Tonin: Free University of Bozen/Bolzano

No 18463, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: We study whether gender-biased financial advice contributes to the gender gap in pension wealth. Using administrative records from four private pension funds in Italy, we document that women are 8 percentage points less likely than men to choose stock-focused investment lines at enrollment. To assess whether advisory behavior contributes to this gap, we conduct a vignette-based survey experiment among pension advisors affiliated to the four funds, randomly varying the gender of otherwise identical prospective clients. Advisors are 22 percentage points less likely to recommend stock-oriented portfolios to females, even after conditioning on advisors' beliefs about relevant client characteristics. We further show that a simple information intervention that makes advisors aware of the documented gender bias eliminates this gap in the experimental setting. Linking advisors to real clients in the administrative data, we demonstrate that the gender gap in actual investment choices shrinks by approximately 60% during the five months following the intervention. This evidence suggests that gender bias in financial advice is largely implicit and that low-cost informational feedback to advisors can meaningfully reduce gender disparities.

Keywords: biased advice; gender; pension; implicit bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G53 J16 J32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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