Here’s How The Gender Gap Applies To Retirement
In its 2016 study “Shortchanged in Retirement,” The National Institute on Retirement Security explored financial hardships facing employed women, women approaching retirement and retired women. Co-authored by Manager of Research Jennifer Brown, the study identified that women are much more likely to face poverty in retirement than their male counterparts.
The analysis attributes the gender disparity to what it calls the dysfunctional “three-legged stool” of middle class retirement: social security, a pension and personal retirement savings. “After decades of restructuring in retirement benefits and stagnant household incomes, this three-legged stool is broken, especially for women,” report the authors. “Women are 80 percent more likely than men to be impoverished at age 65 and older.”
Relying on those three traditional sources of retirement income still leaves many women struggling. Women’s higher likelihood of part-time employment, higher rates of caregiving, longer lives and the wage gap—women earn around 80% of what men earn, according to 2016 census data—are all cited as culprits in the financial plight of retiring women.
Read more @Forbes
