The UK, along with many other countries in the Western world, has a ‘gender pay gap’. In October 2019 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) attempted to estimate the ‘human capital’ and lifetime earnings for the economically active population in the UK. Their figures revealed huge inequalities in earnings between men and women, even among those with the highest academic qualifications. For example, women with a Masters Degree or a PhD still earned one third less over their lifetime than men with the same qualification. Despite a small improvement from 2004, when women’s average lifetime earnings were only 56% of those of men, the report found that in 2019 women still earned, on average, only 59% of the lifetime earnings of men.
The gender pay gap means not only that women earn less than men in their working life, but that they receive lower pensions on retirement. Women received an average of £12 per week from investment income on retirement, compared with £28 for men. Total occupational income pension for a man averaged £111 a week, while it was only £71 for a woman.
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