TY - UNPB
T1 - Gender gap in pension savings: Evidence from Peru’s individual capitalization system
AU - Olivera, Javier
AU - Iparraguirre, Yadiraah
PY - 2022/6
Y1 - 2022/6
N2 - We study the gender gap in pension funds in Peru, a country where the main pension system is based on individual retirement accounts. We exploit randomly selected samples of administrative pension fund individual registers collected between 2005 and 2019 and find a gender gap in favour of men at each percentile of the distribution of pension funds. The unconditional gender gap decreases along the percentiles until it reaches a sort of “glass ceiling” around the 85th percentile, and then it increases substantially. We also detect heterogeneity by birth cohorts, indicating that older cohorts show higher gender gaps in pension saving because of the capitalization process. Moreover, we find that awareness about pension fund risk management –a proxy for financial literacy– increases the dispersion of pension savings over the distribution and, therefore, increases inequality and the gender gap. This situation is aggravated by the fact that Peru has very low levels of financial literacy.
AB - We study the gender gap in pension funds in Peru, a country where the main pension system is based on individual retirement accounts. We exploit randomly selected samples of administrative pension fund individual registers collected between 2005 and 2019 and find a gender gap in favour of men at each percentile of the distribution of pension funds. The unconditional gender gap decreases along the percentiles until it reaches a sort of “glass ceiling” around the 85th percentile, and then it increases substantially. We also detect heterogeneity by birth cohorts, indicating that older cohorts show higher gender gaps in pension saving because of the capitalization process. Moreover, we find that awareness about pension fund risk management –a proxy for financial literacy– increases the dispersion of pension savings over the distribution and, therefore, increases inequality and the gender gap. This situation is aggravated by the fact that Peru has very low levels of financial literacy.
KW - Gender gap
KW - Pension savings
KW - Financial literacy
KW - Unconditional quantile
KW - Peru
UR - https://doi.org/10.18800/2079-8474.0513
U2 - 10.18800/2079-8474.0513
DO - 10.18800/2079-8474.0513
M3 - Working paper
T3 - Documento de trabajo
BT - Gender gap in pension savings: Evidence from Peru’s individual capitalization system
PB - Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru
CY - Lima
ER -