Authors: Janet C. Gornick and Markus Jäntti
Publication: Social Security, Poverty and Social Exclusion in Rich and Poorer Countries. pp. 63-95
Publisher: Intersentia
Editors: Peter Saunders and Roy Sainsbury
Date: September 2010
Introduction:
Although all industrialised countries have enacted public policies that plat floor under household resources and/or redistribute income from higher to lo income families, none have entirely eradicated income poverty. A substantial research literature on poverty in rich countries has reached two over-arch conclusions. One is that the prevalence and intensity of poverty varies mark (across relatively similar countries, due at least in part to variation in social policy designs. The second is that, within all countries, poverty outcomes N extensively across subgroups. In this paper, we draw on data from Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), a cross-national microdata archive, to examine one widely-recognised factor associated with poverty – that is, gender. Specifically, we focus on the question: How does gender as a poverty risk fay vary across a group of 26 high- and middle-income countries?
A large body of research, much of it drawing on the LIS data, has established that, in many countries, women are more likely to be poor than their male counterparts. That is true both before and after taxes and transfers are taken into account. The causes underlying women’s higher risk of economic insecurity are complex, overlapping, and cumulative. The most powerful factor is women’s weaker attachment to the labour market. On average, women command lower market income, including wages and occupational pensions, than do men, and as a result, they receive lower employment-related social transfers. In addition a group, women still command lower pay than men for each hour worked, partly due to their concentration in lower-paying occupations and partly due to discrimination based on gender. In turn, the main reason that women’s connection to paid work is weaker than men’s is their disproportionate engagement in caring for family members, especially young children.
The authors thank Helen Connolly, of the Luxembourg Income Study staff, for helping to construct the categorical variables used in this study, and Shahra Razavi for her comments on an earlier version of this paper, which was prepared for the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD).
Link: Women, Poverty, and Social Policy Regimes: A Cross-National Analysis (PDF)