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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Family ties
— women's work and family histories and their association with incomes in later life in the UK | | Author(s) | Tom Sefton, Maria Evandrou, Jane Falkingham |
| Journal title | Journal of Social Policy, vol 40, part 1, January 2011 |
| Pages | pp 41-69 |
| Source | http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJourna... |
| Keywords | Older women ; Employment ; Family circumstances [elderly] ; Income [older people] ; Pensions. |
| Annotation | This article examines the relationship between the family and work histories of older women and their personal incomes in later life, using retrospective data from the British Household Panel Survey. The association between women's family histories and their incomes later in life are found to be relatively weak, explaining only a small proportion of the overall variation in older women's incomes. Divorce, early widowhood and re-marriage are not associated with any significant differences in older women's incomes, while motherhood is only associated with a small reduction in incomes later in life. While there are significant differences in the work histories of older women with different family histories, this translates into relatively small differences in their personal incomes. This is because: (a) the types of employment career pursued by most women are not associated with significantly higher retirement incomes; and (b) public transfers dampen work history-related differentials, especially for widows. This could be seen as a positive finding in that the `pension penalty' associated with life-course events such as motherhood and divorce is not as severe as often anticipated. On the other hand the pension returns for working longer are relatively low, particularly for women with few qualifications. Suggests that women retiring over the next two decades are unlikely to benefit significantly from the additional years they have spent in employment, because most of this increase has been in part-time employment. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-110223001 A |
| Classmark | BD: WJ: F:SJ: JF: JJ |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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