| |
| |
| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
Lifecourses, pensions and poverty among elderly women in Belgium
— interactions between family history, work history and pension regulations | | Author(s) | Hans Peeters, De Tavernier Wouter |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 35, no 6, July 2015 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, July 2015 |
| Pages | pp 1171-1199 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Older women ; Life span ; Poor elderly ; Pensions ; Retirement policy ; Family relationships ; Employment ; Correlation ; Belgium. |
| Annotation | The precarious financial situation of many older women in developed countries is well established. Nevertheless, in-depth insight into the persistent vulnerability of this group remains largely absent. In this article, the authors demonstrate how a specific focus on the interaction between work history, family history and pension regulations can provide greater insight into the mechanisms that produce poverty among older women in Belgium. To that end, the authors make use of register data on some 9,000 women aged 65-71. Data on the poverty risk of these women is linked to career and family data, spanning over 45 years. The authors find that pension policy can indeed account for the higher poverty risk of some groups of older women (e.g. divorcees) as compared to others (e.g.widows). Similarly, pension policy can, to a large extent, directly or indirectly explain how previous lifecourse events, such as marital dissolution or childbirth, affect old-age poverty risk. However, the study also reveals some unexpected findings. Most notably, pension regulations fail to account for the beneficial situation of married women. Indeed, the analyses that were conducted suggest that capital (income) may prove more decisive than pension rights in explaining the low poverty risk of married women when compared to other marital groups. The authors draw on their findings to suggest where pension policy should go from here. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-150626013 A |
| Classmark | BD: BG6: F:W6: JJ: G5: DS:SJ: WJ: 49: 76E |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|
|