Why do Women in Spain Retire Later than Men?

Abstract

The relationship between gender and retirement in Spain is paradoxical.
The female employment rate between the ages of 55 and 64 is slightly
more than half that of the male rate, whilst the average retirement age
amongst women is much higher. Using event-history analysis
techniques, this paper analyses whether this puzzling gender difference
is due to compositional or selection effects. Data comes from a special
retirement module within the 2006 Spanish Labour Force Survey
(Encuesta de Población Activa, EPA).It applies a novel methodological
framework, contrasting the results from a naïve survival analysis with
those from a duration- selection model. The results suggest that women
retire later than men above all because, from a fi nancial point of view,
they cannot afford to retire any earlier.