women in Germany receive on average almost a third less retirement income than men, reported today the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) on the occasion of the International Women’s Day.
Thus, the difference in retirement income between men and women, the so-called gender gap in pensions, is 29.9%, and the reasons for this are multiple.
On average, women acquire lower pension entitlements throughout their working lives because they partly work in lower-paid sectors than men and more often, moreover, part-time.
Likewise, women stop working more frequently and for a longer period to dedicate themselves to care tasks and occupy managerial positions less frequently.
According to the 2021 Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) published by Eurostat, women over the age of 65 received in Germany in 2020 -the reference year of the survey- a retirement income of 17,814 euros gross per year compared to 25,407 euros for men in the same age group.
Retirement income includes retirement and survivor pensions, as well as private pension plans.
About 29% of women aged 65 and over had retirement income from a survivor’s pension, that is, a monthly allowance corresponding to a percentage of the pension received by the deceased spouse, compared to just over 5 % in the case of men.
In this way, if these incomes for a survivor’s pension and that depend on the job that the spouse had are excluded, the gender gap in pensions, taking into account only one’s own retirement rights, is, with 42.6%, still elderly.
Due to lower incomes, women are at greater risk of falling into poverty in old age than men.
Thus, the poverty risk rate for women over 65 was 20.9% in 2021, compared to 17.5% in the case of men.
Also among people currently working this gender gap in retirement income is to be expected in the future, judging, for example, by the different rates of part-time employment between men and women.
Thus, according to the microcensus, in 2021, 47.4% of employed women between the ages of 15 and 64 worked part-time, compared to only 10.6% of men.
This difference is even more pronounced when there are children in the home, with a 63.6% rate for mothers working part-time compared to 7.3% for fathers.
Source: EFE
Source: Gestion
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