Full-time employment is all that matters? Quantifying the role of relevant and gender-exclusive life-course experiences for gender pension gaps.

Gender pension gaps (GPGs) represent crucial indicators of gender inequalities over the life course. Despite reaching higher levels, they have received less attention than other gender inequalities, such as gender wage gaps. More generally, research typically focuses on selected sets of life course...

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Publicado en:Social Forces Vol. 104; no. 4; pp. 1337 - 1363
Autor principal: Rowold, Carla
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Oxford University Press / USA Jun2026
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      pub: Oxford University Press / USA
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        10.1093/sf/soaf143
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        atl: Full-time employment is all that matters? Quantifying the role of relevant and gender-exclusive life-course experiences for gender pension gaps.
      aug:
        au: Rowold, Carla
        affil: Department of Sociology, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, United KingdomMax Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, GermanyMax Planck – University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health, Rostock, Germany and Helsinki, FinlandHertie School, Berlin, GermanyEinstein Center Population Diversity (ECPD), Berlin, Germany
      su:
        Germany
        Europe
        Netherlands
        Gender inequality
        Employment tenure
        Housekeeping
        Retirement income
        Machine learning
        Data analysis
        Gender wage gap
        Life course approach
      sug:
        subj:
          Gender inequality
          Employment tenure
          Housekeeping
          Germany
          Europe
          Netherlands
          Janitorial Services
          Janitorial services (except window cleaning)
          Retirement income
          Machine learning
          Data analysis
          Gender wage gap
          Life course approach
      keyword:
        copyrightHolder:University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
        copyrightYear:2026
        decomposition
        feature selection
        gender inequality
        gender pension gap
        inLanguage:en
        life course
        pension inequality
        pension system
        publisher:Oxford University Press
        sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf143
        sequence analysis
        copyrightHolder:University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
        copyrightYear:2026
        decomposition
        feature selection
        gender inequality
        gender pension gap
        inLanguage:en
        life course
        pension inequality
        pension system
        publisher:Oxford University Press
        sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf143
        sequence analysis
      ab: Gender pension gaps (GPGs) represent crucial indicators of gender inequalities over the life course. Despite reaching higher levels, they have received less attention than other gender inequalities, such as gender wage gaps. More generally, research typically focuses on selected sets of life course summary measures, predominantly the employment duration , to explain gender inequalities across the life course. This oversimplifies gender-specific life courses in particular. Taking a life-course perspective and using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe for the Netherlands and West Germany, I propose an innovative combination of machine learning, sequence analysis, and decomposition techniques, allowing for a new perspective on gender inequalities over the life course. The study disentangles which specific life-course elements are most relevant for pension inequalities and quantifies the role of gender-exclusive life-course experiences for gender disparities. I find that the duration , timing , order of life-course events, and overall life-course complexity matter for pension income inequalities in both pension systems. Specifically, the duration , timing, and order of care work experiences are more crucial pension predictors than the employment duration , which has been the primary focus of previous research. This holds for the GPGs: the largest shares are attributable to gender-exclusive life-course experiences because of the lack of a male counterpart for female engagement in care work, which is poorly rewarded in pension systems. Future research and policymakers will benefit from considering such gender-specific combinations of life-course experiences for the gender pension gap and other inequalities.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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