Der Gender Pension Gap in Ost- und Westdeutschland: Welchen Einfluss hat eine Scheidung auf die Alterssicherung?

Kreyenfeld, Michaela; Mika, Tatjana; Radenacker, Anke

doi:10.3790/sfo.67.11-12.973

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…On the other hand, the contrasting results across countries for cluster 1 results from the return for men to this life course being much lower in West Germany compared to Italy (Table 4). Second, this life course cluster contains a relatively high share of divorced men in Germany (Table A5.1 in the Appendix) which likely decreases the average return of men for this life course given the splitting of pension rights after divorce (Kreyenfeld, Mika, and Radenacker 2018). (Italy: 7.2%, 478€; West Germany: 4%, 518€).…”

Section: Sa-kob Decomposition Of Gender Pension Gapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life-course-sensitive analysis of group inequalities: Combining Sequence Analysis with the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition

Rowold¹,

Struffolino²,

Fasang³

2022

Preprint

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This paper improves the understanding of how prior life-courses that unfold over several decades relate to inequalities between groups in old age. Economic inequality in old age results from many processes that unfold over individuals’ prior life-courses in given institutional settings. With population aging, such economic inequalities in mature adulthood and old age become increasingly relevant. We propose a step wise process combining the strengths of Multichannel Sequence Analysis to analyse life-courses with the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, which has long been established to analyse group inequalities in outcomes. To illustrate the proposed procedure, we apply it to the case of Gender Pension Gaps in Italy and West Germany. Our analysis reveals that a large part of the gap in both countries is due to highly gender-specific work-family patterns; male-typical life courses receive higher average pension income while female-typical life courses are worse rewarded. On the other hand, only a minor share of the gap is associated with different pension rewards of men and women with the same work-family life course pattern. Thus, we do not find evidence for redistributional measures of pension systems (e.g. care benefits) leading to higher pension incomes of women compared to men within the same life course clusters and thus to a significant reduction of the Gender Pension Gap. We contribute to the literatures on gender inequality, life-course processes, and comparative analysis of old age pensions by showing how combined work and family life-courses lead to different gender pension gaps in two countries.

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Section: Sa-kob Decomposition Of Gender Pension Gapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life-course-sensitive analysis of group inequalities: Combining Sequence Analysis with the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition

Rowold¹,

Struffolino²,

Fasang³

2022

Preprint

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show abstract

“…Acknowledgements. This paper emanated from a paper published in German that used previous SHARE-RV data which included older cohorts (Kreyenfeld et al, 2018). For detail comments on an earlier version of this paper, we thank Christina Boll.…”

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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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Who receives most? Gendered consequences of divorce on public pension income in West Germany and Sweden

Schmauk,

Kridahl

2024

Ageing and Society

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Sweden and West Germany have had persistently high divorce rates in recent decades, but these two welfare states were differently equipped to mitigate the economic consequences of divorce for individual security in old age: Sweden followed a gender-equal policy approach to enable women and men to achieve economic autonomy, while West Germany, following the male-breadwinner model, introduced the system of ‘divorce-splitting’ to account for differences in women's and men's income. Against this background, this study uses large-scale register data from the German Public Pension Fund and the Swedish population registers to examine how divorce is related to the monthly public old-age pension income of women and men. The main comparison groups are divorced and (re)married individuals who entered retirement between 2013 and 2018. We descriptively show annual income histories from ages 20 to 65, and calculate monthly public old-age pension income with respect to lifetime income and pension regulations, such as the supplements/deductions for ‘divorce-splitting’. Multiple ordinary least square regression models further examine how family status relates to monthly public old-age pension income by gender. The results reveal that women and men in Sweden experience similar working histories, although women's incomes are lower. This is also reflected in women still having lower pension incomes than men. However, divorced and married women show comparable pension incomes, while divorced men receive approximately 26 per cent less pension income than married men. In West Germany, divorced women have significantly higher pension incomes than married women. The system of ‘divorce-splitting’ increases women's and decreases men's pension incomes, which seems to equalise their pension incomes. However, both stay below a married man's pension income. The findings indicate economic inequality in public old-age pension income by family status in Sweden and West Germany.

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Der Gender Pension Gap in Ost- und Westdeutschland: Welchen Einfluss hat eine Scheidung auf die Alterssicherung?

Cited by 5 publications

References 11 publications

Life-course-sensitive analysis of group inequalities: Combining Sequence Analysis with the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition

Life-course-sensitive analysis of group inequalities: Combining Sequence Analysis with the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition

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

Who receives most? Gendered consequences of divorce on public pension income in West Germany and Sweden

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