Gender inequalities in pensions: different components similar levels of dispersion

Carole Bonnet, Dominique Meurs and Benoît Rapoport ()
Additional contact information
Benoît Rapoport: Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques (INED)

The Journal of Economic Inequality, 2018, vol. 16, issue 4, No 4, 527-552

Abstract: Abstract While the average gender gap in pensions is quite well documented, gender differences in the distribution of pensions have rarely been explored. We show in this paper that pension dispersion is very similar for men and women within the French pension system of a given sector (public or private). Gender differences are less marked among retired civil servants than among former private sector employees. However, the determinants of these inequalities are not the same for men and women. Using a regression-based decomposition of the Gini coefficient, we find that pension dispersion is mostly due to dispersion of the reference wage for all retirees but gender differences exist. For women, in particular, pension dispersion is also due to the dispersion in contribution periods. We also decompose the Gini coefficient by source of pension to measure the impact of institutional rules (minimum pensions, survivor’s pension) on the extent of pension inequality. Unexpectedly, we find that the impact of minimum pensions is limited, although slightly larger for civil servants than for private-sector employees. Survivor’s pension schemes, on the other hand, contribute positively to pension dispersion among retired women.

Keywords: Decomposition; Gender gap; Gini coefficient; Pension; Private and Public sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10888-018-9379-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Journal Article: Gender inequalities in pensions: different components similar levels of dispersion (2018)
Working Paper: Gender inequalities in pensions: different components similar levels of dispersion (2018)
Working Paper: Gender inequalities in pensions: different components similar levels of dispersion (2018)
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:kap:jecinq:v:16:y:2018:i:4:d:10.1007_s10888-018-9379-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... th/journal/10888/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10888-018-9379-9

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Economic Inequality is currently edited by Stephen Jenkins

More articles in The Journal of Economic Inequality from Springer, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().