This paper focuses on the gender heterogeneity of saving rates within the tradition of those empirical investigations that analyse saving behaviour directly for different groups of the population. We explore these issues by means of econometric estimation of a reduced form life cycle equation of savings and the subsequent simulation of saving rates. The investigation is conducted for Italy and the UK with a view to also verifying the extent to which outcomes reflect country specific factors. In order to isolate the role of preferences from that of family roles we confine the analysis to the subsample of the ‘singles’ in the population. Our results strongly suggest that (single) women do not display a greater taste for saving, but provide mixed support for the reverse possibility. Preliminary exploration of gendered consumption patterns suggests that higher expenditure on rent by women may contribute to lowering their savings with respect to men.
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