Parenthood, Partnership Status and Pensions:

Abstract

Research on the balance of welfare provision between state and market has in the past ignored gender, and more recent feminist analysis has barely explored how changing gender roles over time interact with shifts in pension policy. The loosening link between marriage and motherhood poses questions for pension systems still largely based on the male breadwinner model of pension provision for carers. This article uses data from the General Household Surveys to examine how patterns of employment and private pension disadvantage according to marital and maternal status differ between earlier and later generations of women in Britain. The private pension premium attached to never-married status among women aged over 65 is found to diminish in later generations. It is argued that cross-subsidies in state and private pension schemes in favour of married women may be less appropriate than in the past and that better means of compensating women for periods of caring can be found.

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