Gender gaps in contributions to tax-incentivised pension investment. Early experiences from post-transition Estonia

This paper studies the gender gaps in voluntary pension investment during the build-up phase of the tax-subsidised scheme. The analysis uses register data for 2014 for the full population aged 20 to 55 in Estonia The analysis considers both the extensive and intensive margins of the annual contribution to voluntary pension investment. Around 2.51% of all men, but only 2.35% of all women contributed a positive amount, which implies a raw gender gap in the probability of contributing of 6.5%. Among those contributing, the gender gap in the amount contributed is 25.6% in the mean, and 11.1% in the median. Regression analysis and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition reveal that the gender gaps in voluntary pension investment cannot be attributed to differences in the various observable characteristics, but likely reflect different choices or preferences of men and women.