Year: 2026
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Many countries’ policies are shifting the responsibility for funding retirement onto individual savings. But many individuals live in mixed-sex households where, given typically gender-unequal life-time earnings, opportunities to accumulate savings are also unequal. Thus, a gendered perspective on saving for retirement is needed. This article uses Australian individual and household data to examine conceptual and measurement issues in understanding the gendered factors affecting voluntary retirement saving through superannuation within mixed-sex households, including whether household bargaining power and partners’ characteristics are significant. The article identifies patterns of superannuation savings that question the assumption of Pareto-efficiency implicit in not only the unitary model, but also the household bargaining model favored by feminist economists. This leads to the question of whether saving should be seen as household or individual decisions. These findings have implications for future research on household decision making, retirement savings, and policy on gender equality and well-being in retirement.HIGHLIGHTS There is no evidence that women use their bargaining power to raise voluntary retirement saving among couples in Australia.Couples do not tend to allocate savings between partners to maximize tax advantages.Retirement saving via superannuation is shaped more by individual employment and tax situations, not household decisions.Policies using household means-testing create gender inequality in retirement.
Source: Feminist Economics
Institutions: Curtin University, The Open University
Language: English
Subfield: Accounting
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7150784691