Men and women are different. Most of us recognize that (and for the rest that don't, I have no suggestions...). There's also a difference in their retirement needs. Robert Powell on Dow Jones Newswires looks at this.
According to Paul Hodge, director of Harvard Generations Policy Program:
Baby-boomer women must and should take retirement-planning matters into their own hands and not wait on government or business to solve the looming problems that await three-quarters of the 40 million women born between 1946 and 1964.
Some of his assertions are a little 'out there' for me, but it's still worth reading.
Social Security and pension plans are designed to work well for people with stable career employment, he notes. But women typically don't have stable careers. So, under current Social Security rules, he says women are "punished" for being out of the labor market -- for taking care of children, providing care to elderly parents and the like.
I don't think they're 'punished', they just can't rely on social security to sustain them. It was never intended to do so from its outset.
Social Security credits are based on wages posted to a person's Social Security record. No wages equals no credits. In the European Union, however, Hodge says women are not penalized for being out of the labor market.
"It's not a hair-brained idea" to give Social Security credits to American women who are out of the labor force, he said.
Uh, actually, it is. It never makes sense to promise something that you can't fulfill. This will once again force our children and grandchildren to pay for our inability to pay for something we promised. It's the quintessential definition of 'deficit spending'.
Hodge also says many boomer women will have to work longer, well into their 60s and beyond, to make up make up for shortfalls in income during retirement. " Given the enormous gains in health and life expectancies, working longer is the only logical way for many women boomers to acquire much needed income," Hodge said.
The need to work longer is a result of several factors: Half of working women don't have access to pension or other retirement plans and most working women don't necessarily earn enough to save enough to fund their retirement years.
Good point. Time to consider how to fund your retirement is now. In fact, it was probably yesterday.
Baby-boomer women are more likely to be divorced or never married. And that too will create the need for women to either keep or start working. Unfortunately, Hodge says boomer women, even though they have greater education and stronger labor-force participation than previous generations, won't receive as much from the retirement-income system as their predecessors.
So, the ball is in your court ladies. My suggestion. Don't rely on someone else, or a government agency to do what's right for your retirement. In the words of the Little Red Hen (I love that story), "I'll do it myself".
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