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Welfare state context, female labour-market attachment and childbearing in Germany and Denmark
(2014)
This study investigates the role of female labour-market attachment and earnings in childbearing progressions in two very different European contexts. By applying event-history techniques to German and Danish register data during 1981–2001, we demonstrate how female earnings relate to first, second and third birth propensities. Our study shows that female earnings are positively associated with first birth fertility in Denmark, while this is not the case in West Germany. We interpret our findings based on the fact that Danish social context and policy encourage women to establish themselves in the labour market before becoming mothers, while the German institutional context during the 1980s and 1990s was not geared towards encouraging maternal employment. For higher-order births, the results are less clearcut. For Denmark we find a slightly positive correlation between female earnings and second-birth fertility, while the association is somewhat negative for third-order births. In Germany, women tend to leave the labour market when becoming mothers. Non-employed mothers have elevated second and, in particular, third-birth rates. For the group of mothers who are employed, we find only a weak association between their earnings and higher-order fertility.
Dieser Beitrag diskutiert, inwiefern die Versicherungskontenstichprobe der deutschen Rentenversicherung (VSKT) für Fertilitätsanalysen genutzt werden kann. Ausgangspunkt ist zunächst ein Vergleich der Kinderzahl in den VSKT-Daten mit Informationen aus der amtlichen Statistik. Abgesehen von den jüngeren Kohorten, Ausländerinnen und Personen mit ungeklärten Konten bilden die VSKT-Daten die Fertilitätsbiographien von Frauen relativ gut ab. Besonders geeignet ist der Datensatz für Längsschnittanalysen, die den Zusammenhang der weiblichen Erwerbssituation für Fertilitätsprozesse thematisieren. Die hohen Fallzahlen, der lange Analysezeitraum und die monatsgenauen Angaben zur Erwerbssituation stellen ein einmaliges Analysepotential für Fertilitätsanalysen dar, das wir in diesem Beitrag nur exemplarisch darstellen konnten.
Dieser Beitrag untersucht den „Gender Pension Gap“ in Deutschland auf Basis der sechsten Welle des „Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe“ (SHARE-RV), welcher mit Registerdaten der Deutschen Rentenversicherung aus dem Jahr 2015 verbunden wurde. In die Untersuchung gehen Frauen und Männer der Geburtsjahrgänge 1930 bis 1955 ein. Für diese Kohorten existiert in Westdeutschland ein erheblicher „Gender Pension Gap“. Frauen dieser Geburtsjahrgänge haben im Schnitt nur halb so hohe Anwartschaften in der gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung aufgebaut wie Männer. Im Vergleich zu verheirateten und verwitweten Frauen können ledige und geschiedene Frauen in Westdeutschland deutlich höhere Altersrenten vorweisen. Geschiedene Frauen dieser Kohorten konnten vor allem aufgrund des Versorgungsausgleichs ihre Rentenanwartschaften um etwa 20 Prozent erhöhen. Bei westdeutschen Männern zeigt sich hingegen ein umgekehrter Zusammenhang, d.h. ledige und geschiedene Männer erhalten im Vergleich zu anderen Männern stark unterdurchschnittliche Altersrenten. In Ostdeutschland existiert kein Zusammenhang zwischen Familienstand und Rentenniveau.
Abstract:
The Gender Pension Gap in East and West Germany: How Does Divorce Affect Old-Age Pensions?
This study examines the gender pension gap in Germany based on data from the sixth wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE-RV). This data has been combined with register data from the German Pension Fund of the year 2015. The analytical sample for our analysis includes women and men born between 1930 and 1955. We observe a substantial gender pension gap for West Germans of these cohorts. Women have earned only half of the pension credits of men. Comparing pension entitlements by family status, one finds that single and divorced West German women were able to collect much higher pension entitlements than their married or widowed counterparts. Divorced women could profit from the splitting of pension points that is conducted after divorce. The equalization of the pension points in the case of divorce increases West German women’s pensions by about 20 percent.
For West German men the relationship is vice versa: Single and divorced men are at a particular
risk of receiving a low old age pension. There is no relationship between family status and pension entitlements in East Germany, though.
Germany is one of the few countries in Europe that has implemented a system of ‘divorce splitting’. Under this system, the pension credits that spouses have accumulated during their marriage are combined and then split equally between them upon divorce. This study examines how divorce affects public pension entitlements in Germany, and how these patterns are influenced by the system of divorce splitting. The data for our analysis comes from SHARE-RV, a direct linkage of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) with administrative data of the research data centre of the German Pension Insurance Fund (Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund). The data include information on the beneficiaries’ monthly earnings and employment biographies, as well as on their pension entitlements and the credits they received through divorce splitting. The results of the analysis, which was restricted to West German men and women born between 1935 and 1954, reveal that there are large gender gaps in public pension benefit levels. However, the investigation also shows that single and divorced West German women have larger personal pension entitlements than their married or widowed counterparts. Furthermore, the public pension entitlements of divorced men and women in West Germany are very similar. This can be attributed partially to the divorce-splitting system, which tends to increase the pension benefits of divorced women, while reducing the pension benefits of their male counterparts.