A Critique of “Productivist” Policy Responses to Population Ageing Focusing on Financial Outcomes in Retirement for Women

Abstract

Focusing on financial outcomes in retirement for women, this paper critically examines the suite of “productivist” policies proposed by leading regional and global policy institutions as a solution to what they perceive as a potential population ageing crisis. Specifically, the paper challenges the claim that this suite of policies constitutes a virtuous system. Taking the life course timing of women’s paid and unpaid work, we successively integrate the likely key consequences of “productivist ageing” policy in a series of retirement income scenarios. The series culminates in a situation where a mother twice enters and leaves paid employment to provide respectively child care and elder care. Rather than illustrating a sustainable system, our results indicate a viscous, intergenerational cycle in which impoverished caregivers are in turn forced to rely on the unpaid care of their adult daughters.