Document Type
Article
Abstract
This paper examines how the financialization of retirement has reshaped women’s retirement security in the United States. Rather than focusing primarily on the gender wage gap, the paper argues that the shift from defined-benefit (DB) pensions to defined-contribution (DC) retirement accounts has transformed retirement from a system based on institutional guarantees into one that depends on uninterrupted employment, regular contributions, financial knowledge, and market performance. Through a review of existing literature and U.S. retirement data, the paper shows how retirement risk has increasingly been transferred from employers and collective institutions to individual workers. The analysis identifies several mechanisms through which this shift produces unequal outcomes, including unequal access to employer-sponsored plans, differences in contribution capacity, caregiving interruptions, market exposure, compounding effects, and the growing burden of financial decision-making. These mechanisms disproportionately affect women because women are more likely to experience lower lifetime earnings, part-time employment, and caregiving-related career interruptions. The paper further argues that financialized retirement systems convert labor-market inequalities into long-term retirement wealth disparities by rewarding those with continuous employment and greater capacity to absorb financial risk. Evidence reviewed throughout the paper demonstrates that women accumulate less retirement wealth, hold more conservative investment portfolios, and face greater risks of financial insecurity in old age. The paper concludes that retirement inequality is best understood as an outcome of institutional design rather than individual failure and argues that stronger public protections, more redistributive pension features, and policies that reduce penalties associated with caregiving interruptions are necessary to improve women’s retirement security.
Recommended Citation
Lam, Elena; Williams, Evelyn; and Miller, Raylynn
(2026)
"From Pensions to Portfolios: How Retirement Financialization Reshapes Women's Retirement Security in the United States,"
Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal: Vol. 13:
Iss.
2, Article 8.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.61366/2576-2176.1183
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/horizons/vol13/iss2/8
Primo Type
Article