Men, women and pensions

This report was financed by, and prepared for the use of the European Commission, Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers, Unit D2 ‘Equality between men and women’, in the framework of a contract managed by Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini (FGB) in partnership with Istituto per la Ricerca Sociale (IRS). It was originally developed as an input to the 2015 Pension Adequacy Report of the Social Protection Committee of the European Union. The aim of the paper is to examine pension inequality between men and women. "Why should the mere fact of gender imbalance in one particular form of income be of especial worry? After all, insofar as pensions enter into household income, that inequality is already captured by our concern about social inclusion. In other words, if low pensions lead to lower command over resources and hence to a greater risk of poverty or social exclusion, our statistical ‘early warning systems’ should already signal the existence of an issue. To examine pension inequality between men and women as an issue additional to social inclusion, we must be concerned about something that is distinct and different from income inequality..."