Le système de retraite italien compense-t-il les inégalités hommes-femmes sur le marché du travail? (The lifetime gender gap in Italy. Does the pension system countervail labour market outcomes?)

In Italy large work career gender gaps currently exist, particularly regarding wages and activity rates. This paper investigates the issue looking at lifetime incomes, where from the one side all the career gaps are summed up, from the other the redistribution acted by the pension system may mitigate the differences. Exploiting an original database on entire work careers, we document how the pay gap constantly widens with age and how women tend to cumulate a lower number of eligible working years. Both gaps have an impact on the pension calculation, so that at retirement gender differences are even higher. By means of a microsimulation model we show that the pension system partially countervails labour market outcomes, implying lower differences in lifetime incomes. However, due to the current transition to an actuarially neutral system, the effect will vanish, posing some concerns about the future prospects of gender income inequality.