Under pension reforms in the former Soviet Union, unisex annuities benefit women more than men because of a major redistribution toward women. But they also penalize women more for shifting toward unpaid household work and may cause increased poverty among lone elderly women, especially in Kazakhstan, which has a high service requirement for the minimum pension and provides no compensation for time out to have children. Castel and Fox analyze the gender implications of pension reform in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, and Moldova. The new systems deliberately penalize early retirement and reward longer careers, so that with no change in behavior or policy, women's pensions will be lower than men's on average. Still, the implicit financial returns for women remain higher on average than returns for men, because of women's longer life expectancy and because of redistributory minimum pensions.
Under pension reforms in the former Soviet Union, unisex annuities benefit women more than men because of a major redistribution toward women. But they also penalize women more for shifting toward unpaid household work and may cause increased poverty among lone elderly women, especially in Kazakh...