Another robust result is the effect of being civil servant. Being a civil servant reduces
significantly the probability of becoming poor.
On the other side, early retirement, gender, and owning the house seem not to be relevant in
changing the probability of becoming poor.
7. Conclusions
In this paper we address the question whether transition into retirement is associated with
an increase of the probability of becoming poor. We use an income approach to poverty.
We start by analysing the incidence of poverty for different groups of the population,
namely retired and non retired individuals, and among retired people and we have found
that regardless of the definition of poverty, its incidence is always larger for retired than for
not-retired persons. We have found some evidence of an improvement in the situation of
retired individuals in the first half of the analysed period, especially of retired men.
We have also found some evidence of gender inequality as retired and not-retired women
usually show a larger proportion of individuals in poverty. This difference is not present
when only workers are considered which points to the fact that the difference may arise
from gender differences in labour market status, namely the existence of a more significant
part of women than of men who have no paid activity, and are not retired.
For retired workers, older cohorts tend to be more subject to poverty than younger ones.
The cohort of people born since 1940 is always the one with the smallest incidence of
poverty, regardless of the poverty line that we consider. The first years in the sample - until
1997 or 1996, depending on the measure of low income, - have shown a particularly
favourable evolution of this cohort’s relative position.
When analysing differences in low income incidence by household type, we saw that
retired people living alone are the ones that are worse off. That is true both for men and for
women. Nevertheless, the gap between the relative position of that household type and the
position of the next poorest household type - couple with no children - is especially large
for women.
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