Exposing the Gap: Gender Inequality in Occupational Pension Coverage and Income Across Europe

Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE), this paper examines occupational pension income and coverage gaps between men and women. The focus is on a group of countries with comparable occupational pension regulations: Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The results show that after accounting for observable characteristics, over half of the gender gap in occupational pension coverage is explained, largely driven by women’s shorter labour market participation, greater part-time work, and lower wages. Factors driving this gap remain constant across birth cohorts. Conditional on receiving an occupational pension, women receive nearly 40 percent less occupational pension income than men, partly due to part-time work and industry of employment. Selection into pension receipt has only a limited impact on the gender pension gap. While pension coverage gap decomposition shows little variation across countries, this is not the case for the gender pension gap, notably with cross-country differences in part-time work.