Patterns of Employment, Gender and Pensions: The Effect of Work History on Older Women's Non-State Pensions

Gender inequality of income in later life is linked to earlier employment through the major role of occupational and personal pensions. In addition to women's lower earnings, their diverse patterns of employment, in terms of the timing of periods of full-time, part-time and non-employment, may affect non-state pension income. In this paper, work history data from the 1988 OPCS Retirement and Retirement Plans Survey is used, first to identify distinct patterns of older women's lifetime employment and relate these to socio-economic and marital status. Second, we analyse the receipt and amount of occupational and personal pensions for women over state pension age according to their pattern of lifetime employment. We show that older women's likelihood of receiving non-state pension income and the amount received were closely related to their employment pattern, especially whether their employment had been mainly full time or not. However, even older women with full time and mainly continuous employment, who represent an elite minority, were disadvantaged in non-state pension income compared with men. Women's full-time employment in mid-life had a disproportionate influence in improving likelihood of pension entitlement compared with earlier employment.