Musings of an aging fan

In financial terms, two bad things can happen:
- someone can die too early; if they are the breadwinner / have dependents, then this hits their dependents
- someone can live too long; their savings might then run out before they die.

In non-financial terms, dying too early is generally taken as a bad thing, and living a long time is often taken as a bad thing (possibly unless the person who is living a long time is suffering from extreme ill-health). But in financial terms, they can both be bad.

In the past, insurers have used proxies for some information - eg in asking about medical conditions one's parents and grandparents might have had. But we are moving towards a position where we can do some genetic tests on the person involved. Whether this is a good thing or not is debatable.

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If it was mandated that the premiums were the same for males and females, then it would be economically advantagious to deny coverage to people who were getting an overly good deal. This, in my opinion, would be more disadvantageous than the discriminatory pricing.

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Quite.

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However if women are to be charged more for pensions etc, there needs to be a recognition by society that the unpaid work of parenthood needs some form of compensation. Otherwise, those who do the work of bringing up the next generation of taxpayers pay twice - with a wage cut now, and by having less funding in retiremnt.

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An interesting point, with numerous unstated assumptions. The ones that spring to mind are:

* You are assuming that women are the caregivers and that the world would not and should not change so that men will have an equal role in that area.

* You are assuming that having children is a right rather than a privilege you earn by having the ability to support them as they grow up. (In revelant aspects; emotionally, financially, etc.) If you don't think that having the children
is compensation enough, why are you having them?

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Well the majority of full-time child rearing *is* done by women. Obviously there are exceptions. Whether or not that should change is a very different question to whether it will. However my comment applies equally to people of either gender who take time out of working to raise children. I raised it here because of the question of charging women more for pensions, when they are already likely to be significantly disadvantaged in financing retirement.

I'm certainly not assuming having children is a right. What I am saying is that it's a costly thing which has benefits to society. If we as a society want further generations (to look after us in our old age, or because human life is generally a good thing for humans), then I think it's unreasonable to, in all cases, put that cost entirely on those who do have children. The loss of retirement funding is one such cost.

I'm aware there are a lot of arguments here around incentivising, however I object strongly to the suggestion that many (traditionally female) roles - teaching, nursing and parenting - ought to be done out of a sense of vocation or love of the role itself, when such a thing is *never* suggested for other (traditionally male) roles - such as those in law and finance. After all Mr Bank Manager, if the world of international banking is so fascinating, surely you'll be prepared to take on this role for free?

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when such a thing is *never* suggested for other (traditionally male) roles - such as those in law and finance.

It's *never* suggested for male roles, is it? Sounds like a bit of dubious argument, personally, given that doctors, academics and scientists trivially spring to mind as areas which get lower compensation due to vocational enjoyment.

You seem to have cherry-picked a couple of which are traditionally male roles that few people want to do for the purposes of your argument. Bad form :p ;).

Edited Date: 2008-06-16 01:39 pm (UTC)

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given that doctors, academics and scientists trivially spring to mind as areas which get lower compensation due to vocational enjoyment

Doctors are traditionally high wage earners. And scientists' incomes vary greatly, depending on their field and type of employment.

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Cherry picking, really?

As a (female) doctor, I stand by my examples. In my first post-graduate year, I took home more pay than my father, a senior teacher of more than 30 years' experience. We both worked crappy hours and had times of very high stress. We both love our jobs. He's a lot better at his than I am (currently) at mine. I was working under direction and he was in a school management role.

To compare my lifetime earning potential with that of a nurse is either uninformed or insulting.

As for no-one wanting to do law, in Australia where degree requirements are solely a matter of supply/demand, law is the the course with the second greatest entry score retirement (with the cut off being a score in the top 0.5th centile). Commerce degrees are very close behind (around the top centile). Nursing requires a score somewhere in the top 30 per cent, teaching rather less.

You seem to be nit-picking while ignoring the basic thrust of the argument - that 'women's work' is not financially rewarded. Also poor form.

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the basic thrust of the argument - that 'women's work' is not financially rewarded

Essentially, I agree.

"Women's work" inside one's own home - parenting, child rearing, cooking, cleaning, house-keeping - is not financially rewarded. (I'm not saying that all these should be women's work, but they usually are). Society has not developed a way of directly remunerating women for this work.

"Women's work" outside the home - or, let us say, the traditionally female employment roles - eg, nurse, teacher, child minder, shop assistant - are often lowly paid.

There isn't an obvious category of "men's work" around the home. Outside the home environment, many men's roles are highly paid, but many are also lowly paid.

I don't have the statistics immediately to hand, but I am sure that the average female wage / salary is less than the average male salary. This is partly because many women take a career break to raise children. Also, of course, there are those women currently taking a career break aren't earning at all.

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You seem to be nit-picking while ignoring the basic thrust of the argument - that 'women's work' is not financially rewarded. Also poor form.

*grins*. Point granted. Poor form all round. I'm afraid I was irritated by nit of your empasis of the word 'never' in your argument and felt I had to pluck it out.

[My point about doctors stems from my uninformed belief that, if you make allowance for the time spent training, the calibur of the individual, etc. you probably are paid worse than the corresponding person in ... law or finance, say. If you think that you're paid better or equally, I'll bow to your experience in the matter.]

So substitute 'Doctors' with writers, artists, police and firemen, ...

Edited Date: 2008-06-16 02:53 pm (UTC)

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I don't think the point about training stacks up. I work in finance, and had a five-year training period after graduation. (In fact, the average in my profession is seven years, with most entrants never qualifying).

I am now earning a good salary. But I'm not out-performing a GP, or hospital doctor of sixteen years' post-qualification experience. And in my first years of work / training, I wasn't earning much.

(Yes, I could have gone into a different field within finance, eg merchant banking, and be earning megabucks. But then, I could be a doctor in private practise).

Edited Date: 2008-06-16 03:08 pm (UTC)

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OK, this is veering wildly off topic. My point was
- the people who mainly do the work of child raising (and elder care) are women
- This directly affects their number of years paid into a pension
- If women, by virtue of their gender, are charged more for a pension, then they will be worse off in two ways because of their gender
- If society values this work (and it should, since without children being born the economy will collapse), there ought to be some sort of compensation for this. (It appears there is at least some form of this in the UK - thanks romancinger).

Your response was that people (and in current society that usually means women) ought to have children because it's so gosh-darned rewarding. (I think the inverse relationship between women's access to education/employment at fertility rates says otherwise).

My reply is that this argument is usually used to justify denying wage rises to caring professions. In fact it's generally wielded by politicians who, if their own pay/pensions are questioned will cry 'pay peanuts get monkeys'! My point is it doesn't stand up as an argument there, and it doesn't here. My *never* was meant to be the written version of an exasperated flourish - whatever. I'd be prepared to bet that
a) women still make up the majority of the 'caring' professions, and
b) These jobs earn less money than jobs with equivalent training/work that are not traditionally female roles.
c) A major reason for this is that a large number of people in these professions put up with crap pay out of a sense of duty to their students/patients/clients.
This was not meant to be an argument of the merit of different professions. (Frankly I think most people in The City are obscenely over-paid, and it irks me when my colleagues argue we should earn more, just because if we went to the city we too could be obscenely over-paid).

So I return to my point: why should women bear the costs of raising the next generation twice over (as they do in many countries)?

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randomchris.livejournal.com

I am so far the sole no on the second question, and here's why.

It's often quite reasonable for women to be charged less than men for life insurance (same lump sum payout as a man in the event of death, but a statistical probability that more monthly payments will be made), but the same amount as men for a pension, because of how pensions work.

Quite frequently, a pension paid to a married couple continues to be paid until the death of both partners - so that would be the same whether the pension-payer was male or female.

Also, pensions are funded partly or wholly by the interest earned on the stock market from the amount paid into the pension. Some of them will return the leftover starting pot as a death benefit, decreased if necessary depending on the amount paid out - in this type of pension, the total amount paid out would be identical no matter how long the pensioner lived. In either case, the amount paid out by the company is similar to (starting amount of pension + interest earned on it), no matter how long they've been paying out on it for.

(Some companies would lose out under this scheme, if they don't have high enough pension contributions for the interest alone to fund the pension and thus had to dip into the starting amount after a certain number of years.)

So quite often lifespan is not actually relevant to (the amount of pension paid out - the amount of pension paid in), therefore women should not be charged extra for pensions. Does that make sense?

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Answers based on current UK practice:

Quite frequently, a pension paid to a married couple continues to be paid until the death of both partners - so that would be the same whether the pension-payer was male or female.

Typically only 50% is paid to the spouse, on the basis that there is one fewer person to support in the partnership. Nonetheless, modern mortality tables *do* lead to a broadly similar position for males and females. This is an example of how stastics would be broadly similar for males and females, though - not that it it shouldn't be if if the statistics didn't hold this view.

Some of them will return the leftover starting pot as a death benefit, decreased if necessary depending on the amount paid out - in this type of pension, the total amount paid out would be identical no matter how long the pensioner lived.

...

So quite often lifespan is not actually relevant to (the amount of pension paid out - the amount of pension paid in), therefore women should not be charged extra for pensions. Does that make sense?

Not a huge amount of sense, I don't think, no. You describe a pension product that, despite working in pensions, I haven't heard of, and which companies offerring would be guaranteed to lose money on (unless there were appropriate small-print conditions attached, which would destroy the point of the argument you were making). And on the basis that people taking advantage of this strange product don't worry about the lifespan of the person receiving the pension, you conclude that under no circumstances is the lifespan relevant, and so women living longer shouldn't be a problem.

I liked your first argument much better. Even if it was an argument saying that the statistics didn't back the discrimination up (provided the individuals concerned were married).

Edited Date: 2008-06-16 02:35 pm (UTC)

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But a pension paid to two people isn't a pension for a female. Just like a life assurance policy paid out when one person of a couple dies isn't a life assurance policy for a female.

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romancinger.livejournal.com

I'd like to point out that 'women's work' ie childrearing, is not totally unrewarded. I actually get a pension because I worked enough years as a carer to get National Insurance points.

Having said that, the remuneration for rearing the next generation, and saving the state many thousands on the care of my mother, is not high. 'Pittance' is the word that comes to mind...

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Thank you - I didn't know that. It's certainly not the case in the country I grew up in. Are men eligible for the same deal if they do the child-rearing?

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