Research

This study investigates the motherhood penalty on personal net wealth and public pension wealth, focusing on women born between 1937 and 1989. Expanding upon previous research, we (a) contrast the impact of motherhood on public pension wealth and net wealth, (b) adopt a dynamic perspective by modelling wealth accumulation over the life course, and (c) differentiate between mothers of one or multiple children. Our sample includes individuals insured in the German public pension system, excluding civil servants and self-employed. We use the SOEP-RV linkage data, combining the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) with administrative records from the German Pension Insurance (VSKT), and analyze public pension wealth and individual net wealth for 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2017. Growth curve models reveal a significant motherhood penalty in net wealth, particularly pronounced in West Germany. For public pension wealth, there is a significant penalty in West Germany, while no significant long-term effect is observed in East Germany.

Widowhood is a life-course event that exposes women to heightened economic insecurity in later life. As survivor benefits face potential reductions in many European countries, understanding their role in mitigating the economic consequences of widowhood is increasingly important. In this paper we compare the economic consequences of widowhood for women of retirement age in Germany, where public survivor benefits are relatively generous, and the Netherlands, where survivor benefits are largely provided through occupational and private pensions. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel and Dutch administrative microdata, we implement an event-study design to estimate changes upon widowhood in household income, public and occupational/private survivor benefits, as well as heterogeneity by pre-widowhood income quartile. Income losses are comparable across countries, but the underlying mechanisms differ. In Germany, public survivor benefits are the main buffer, with larger benefits for higher income women. In the Netherlands, occupational and private survivor benefits play a more prominent role but are highly unequally distributed. A flat-rate public pension with a higher benefit level for single individuals partly offsets this inequality. Reducing public survivor benefits may thus negatively affect widows at the bottom of the distribution, especially in countries without a generous flat-rate pension.

Population aging and increasing family diversity raise concerns about women’s financial outcomes in later life, as a greater share do not live with a breadwinning spouse. Women’s financial wellbeing is particularly jeopardized in conservative welfare states that limit women’s options to accrue independent pension entitlements. This study examines women’s work–family life courses and financial autonomy (independent pensions) versus financial security (household income) after age 65 in two conservative welfare states with distinct pension systems: West Germany with a Bismarckian pension system and the Netherlands with a more universalistic pension system. Drawing on SHARELIFE data, we apply multichannel sequence and cluster analysis, and regression methods to link work-family life course typologies to individual pensions and household equivalence income after age 65. Findings show that typical work-family life courses in the two countries strongly resembled each other, characterized by a strong care orientation and weak labour force attachment of married mothers. However, women with care-oriented life courses receive substantially higher individual pensions in the Netherlands, which grant Dutch women higher financial autonomy. In contrast, women’s household income is slightly higher in West Germany, affording a higher financial security but less financial autonomy.

Employment histories are a central source of economic inequality over the life course. Yet, their long-term consequences for wealth accumulation depend not only on labor market participation itself but also on the institutional arrangements through which employment-related resources are redistributed. We develop a framework that conceptualizes two complementary redistribution mechanisms shaping individual wealth accumulation: public redistribution through welfare-state institutions, constituting formal social insurance, and private redistribution through family institutions, constituting informal social insurance. Focusing on Germany as a conservative welfare state, we investigate how these mechanisms jointly translate gendered employment histories into two key resources for old-age security: public pension wealth and personal net wealth. Empirically, we analyze individuals born between 1932 and 1976 using linked survey and administrative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the German Pension Insurance (SOEP-RV). We first identify typical employment trajectories by means of sequence and cluster analysis and subsequently estimate their association with the accumulation of pension wealth and net wealth using growth curve models. Continuous full-time employment is associated with a double advantage, yielding the highest accumulation of both public pension wealth and personal net wealth. Conversely, discontinuous employment trajectories produce a double disadvantage across both resource domains. Female-dominated part-time and homemaker trajectories occupy an intermediate position: although pension care credits and resource pooling within couples partially compensate employment-related disadvantages, these mechanisms do not fully offset the long-term consequences of weaker labor market attachment. Our findings demonstrate that inequalities in retirement resources arise not directly from employment histories but from their institutional translation through complementary welfare-state and family redistribution mechanisms. They highlight the importance of analyzing wealth accumulation as an institutionally embedded life-course process.