Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of the research on women’s financial planning for retirement. This paper provides a brief review of the work carried out so far along with a conceptual framework of factors influencing women’s retirement financial planning. In addition, it lists significant gaps and recommends avenues for future research.
Design/methodology/approach
The review is based on 151 articles appearing in various peer-reviewed journals published during 1980–2017. The study establishes its prominence by studying the publication activities based on the year of publication and region, citation analysis, research designs, data analysis techniques and findings from the selected articles.
Findings
Most of the literature on women’s financial planning for retirement indicates a lack of financial management amongst women and their susceptibility to poverty in postretirement years. The majority of the research works in this field have taken place in developed economies. Empirical research with regression-based models for analysis is the most popular research design. This review also highlights the significant determinants of women’s retirement financial planning as identified through literature. These include socio-demographic factors, psychological constructs, financial literacy, economic and circumstantial forces.
Originality/value
This paper covers the research works done in this area in the past 38 years. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to provide a systematic and comprehensive compilation of the knowledge in this subject. It further synthesizes the findings of various studies on factors influencing women’s retirement financial planning and gives recommendations for future studies.
This study aims to determine the status of existing research on financial planning for retirement. We used bibliometric analysis and content analysis to examine a sample of 1,116 studies conducted over a span of more than five decades. Bibliographic coupling network was developed to determine the intellectual themes in the field. Our findings suggest that the structural, economic, and cultural disparities worldwide lead to distinct pressures for savings on individuals. Further studies should be conducted considering emerging economies and the aforementioned disparities to gain deeper insights. While a few studies have examined the influence of social biases, behavioral biases, personality traits, and psychological constructs on financial literacy and the impact of this interaction on financial planning for retirement. We conclude by suggesting potential future research directions.
This study examines the financial literacy level of Indian professional women and its relation to their retirement planning behavior. We use factor analysis and the Rasch model to evaluate the validity and reliability of a financial literacy scale. Additionally, we use multiple regression to examine the association between demographic characteristics and financial literacy with retirement planning. Our results reveal that the respondents display low levels of financial literacy as reflected by a lack of awareness about both basic and advanced financial concepts. Further, a woman's age, income, profession (financial), and understanding of advanced financial concepts are key factors associated with retirement planning behavior. The findings have implications for financial planning professionals, advisors, regulators, and policymakers in guiding women to make better retirement decisions.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.