Tom Murphy
RedwoodAge.com

Women over 50 are much less likely to receive pensions. But the times, they are a'changin'.

The Employee Benefits Research Institute, a nonprofit research group based in Washington, reports that just 28.4 percent of women over 65 got some sort of annuity or pension income in 2006 and, when they did, it averaged only about $11,142 a year.  By comparison, 44.6 of men were getting an average of $17,200 a year.

The EBRI study speculates that one reason is that women over 50 in 2006 are part of a group that spent fewer years working than their younger counterparts.

On average, women today also spend less time working than men and tend to accept lower-paying jobs.

However, the nonpartisan group said the younger women are still spending more time in the work force than older women and, therefore, are likely to receive bigger annuities or pensions when they retire.

The study focuses on age, gender, education levels, marital status and other demographics.

Key Factors
The group says the likelihood of receiving such post-retirement income increases with age except for those over 80. However, the percentage of those over 80 who receive payments rose to 39.7 percent in 2006 from just 17.7 percent in 1975.

Education also plays a role in benefits. About 27.5 percent of men with a graduate-level education received payments after age 50, which was 5.8 percent more than those without a high school diploma.

And men over 50 who were married or widowed were more likely to receive payments. For women, however, those who never married were more likely to receive annuities or pensions than married women, although widows received more payments than either women who never married or those who were still married.

About 7.5 percent of those over 50 received pensions from the public sector, which compared with 12.6 percent in the private sector. But the public-sector payments averaged $17.974 - more than double the $8,146 from the private sector.