EBRI Fast Facts On Gender Issues in Pensions

The Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) released  Fast Facts #257 on November 26, 2013. Gender Gap Holds in Retirement Plan Participation is a one-page summary regarding their findings:

While the EBRI analysis of data from the 2013 March Current Population Survey found that female wage and salary workers ages 21–64 were found to participate in a retirement plan at a lower level than males. However, among  full-time, full-year worker ages 21–64, females had a higher rate of participation in a retirement plan (55.0 percent for women, compared with 52.3 percent for men). Overall, women are more likely to work part-time and to have lower earnings, which accounts for the difference in results for all workers versus those employed fulltime, full-year.

In fact, across all work-status categories, females were more likely to participate in a retirement plan than males—a result that has persisted since 2001, when the full-time, full-year participation level was slightly higher for females than for males (58.5 percent to 58.1 percent).

The full report can be accessed here.