Abstract
AbstractInternational organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank raise concerns about the financial sustainability issues of pension systems. These issues have attracted increasing attention because of the challenges presented by lower growth and financial market volatility, making it harder for governments to fulfil their promises on pension policies (Ebbinghaus, 2011). In order to tackle these challenges, it is not uncommon that governments reform pension schemes with an emphasis on individual responsibility (Yeh et al., 2018). They particularly stress the earnings-related pension measures as an important means to assist people to accumulate pension income (Foster, 2014). Employees are the target group for measures relating to earnings-related pension measures. The amount of pension income accumulated through these measures is highly related to employees’ earnings.
Highlights
International organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank raise concerns about the financial sustainability issues of pension systems
This article is concerned with the incompatibility challenge faced by women
It has shown that the government has the potential to assist women to tackle this challenge by implementing the defamilisation/familisation and pension strategies
Summary
International organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank raise concerns about the financial sustainability issues of pension systems. Through the provision of defamilisation measures (such as affordable public child care services), the government can reduce women’s caring responsibilities, and create more favourable conditions for women to take part in the work economy as a worker and join the earnings-related pension scheme to save pension income. As mentioned in the introduction, the governments in these two locations regard these measures as an important means for assisting people to accumulate pension income for retirement (Commission on Poverty, 2015; Shi and Mok, 2012) Those women who spend most of their time providing care in the family are likely to face the incompatibility challenge as they have difficulties in using these measures in saving pension income. It is difficult for women to save pension income through the earningsrelated pension measures due to a lower labour participation and the gender wage gap (note 6)
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