Households and Income: Ageing and Gender Inequalities in Urban Brazil and Colombia

This paper discusses the ageing process in Brazil and Colombia according to gender and socioeconomic inequalities. The ageing process is related to reforms in social policies in each country. Reforms in the pension systems show contrasting results for the family structure and income. In Brazil, the extension of pensions to rural and informal workers leads to empowering poorer elderly women and men in economic and domestic relationships. Universalizing pensions allows the elderly to chose to live alone or to support adult children. On the other hand, in Colombia the reform created the individual saving system, reinforcing social exclusion and inequalities at the end of the life course. At the same time, the structural adjustments of the economy have generated new social contracts and economic order, but in different ways. The universal or individual character of the new pension system redefines in each country the profile of gender, generations, and socioeconomic inequalities. The universal reform can mitigate the economic and domestic exclusion of poorer and rural elderly, as in Brazil; and the individual reform can reinforce inequalities and, as a result, reproduce gender roles of domestic submission and dependence for poorer women in advanced ages.