A woman’s cause? Popular attitudes towards pension credits for childcare in Norway
| Author | Sigtona Halrynjo,Ragni Hege Kitterød,Axel West Pedersen |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1388262719869065 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
EJSS
Article
European Journal of Social Security
2019, Vol. 21(3) 241–261
A woman’s cause? Popular
ª The Author(s) 2019
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attitudes towards pension
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DOI: 10.1177/1388262719869065
credits for childcare
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in Norway
Sigtona Halrynjo
Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway
Ragni Hege Kitterød
Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway
Axel West Pedersen
Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway
Abstract
In many countries – including Norway – concerns about the persistent gender gap in pensions have
led to the introduction of child credits that compensate mothers for losing accrued pension rights
while they care for small children. In political debates child credits are typically framed as being
unequivocally women-friendly. But, although they help to reduce the gender gap in pension
income, they tend to discourage mothers’ paid work and favour couples with a gendered division
of paid and unpaid work. This article uses survey data to investigate the extent to which the
working age population in Norway supports the idea that parents (mothers) of pre-school children
with low earnings should be compensated by the pension system. We examine whether the
pattern of support is consistently gendered or whether there are internal cleavages among men
and women according to socio-economic status and work-family adaptation. We find that,
although both genders express positive attitudes, women are on average more inclined to support
child credits than men, but with strong internal divisions. While less-educated women in families
with a traditional division of labour constitute the most supportive group, highly-educated women
in gender-equal families are as sceptical towards child credits as their male peers. Surprisingly,
among both genders, we find that younger cohorts are as supportive as older cohorts.
Keywords
Gender gap, pension policy, welfare opinion, unpaid work, gender-equality, family models
Corresponding author:
Axel West Pedersen, Research Professor, Institute for Social Research, P.O. Box 3233 Elisenberg, NO-0208, Norway.
E-mail: axel.w.pedersen@samfunnsforskning.no
242
European Journal of Social Security 21(3)
Introduction
The universal persistence of a significant gender gap in pensions is a growing concern for social policy
analysts and policymakers (Bettio et al. 2012, Burkevica et al. 2015, Chłon´-Domin´czak 2017, Hal-
vorsen and Pedersen 2019, Jefferson 2009). The median individual pension income of female pen-
sioners is lower than that of their male peers, and older women are at a much higher risk of poverty than
older men (OECD 2017). The most important source of the gender gap in pension income is recognised
to be the gendered division of paid and unpaid work (Ginn and Arber 1992, Ginn and McIntyre 2013).
Women tend to receive lower wages, have more career breaks and work fewer hours compared to men,
presumably due to the continued unequal division of paid and unpaid work within the family (D’Addio
2012, Bettio et al. 2013, Mo¨hring 2018). As most national pension systems are designed to reflect pre-
retirement earnings levels, the gender difference in lifetime earnings tends to spill over into the
distribution of accrued pension rights between male and female pensioners. Although the gender gap
in pension income is expected to narrow in the coming decades as younger generations of women
participate more in the labour market, significant gender differences are still expected to be found in
pension outcomes in most OECD and EU countries, including the relatively gender-equal Nordic
countries (OECD 2017, Bettio et al. 2013, Chłon´-Domin´czak 2017).
As a means to reduce the gender gap in pensions and to compensate women for their unpaid care
work, many European countries (i.e. Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Norway and
Sweden) have introduced systems for awarding pension credits to parents who care for small
children. The specific rules of childcare credits and their interaction with the general architecture
of the pension system vary across countries (D’Addio 2012, Mo¨hring 2018). However, the
schemes are typically financed through general taxation and targeted towards parents with low
earnings and/or reduced participation in the formal labour market while caring for small children.
Most often mothers are the beneficiaries of these credits, even if the schemes are formally gender
neutral (D’Addio 2012, Jefferson 2009).
Despite its role in reducing the gender gap in pensions and in rewarding women’s unpaid caring
work, the granting of child credits is potentially controversial. It goes against a general reform
trend in many OECD countries to strengthen the link between lifetime earnings and pension
benefits – a trend that is most clearly manifest in reforms inspired by the Notional Defined
Contribution (NDC) approach pioneered by Sweden and Italy in the 1990s (Holzmann et al. 2012).
Paradoxically, the granting or expansion of child credits has, in several cases, been added as part
of reforms intended to remove a number of more obscure and seemingly ‘women-friendly’ redis-
tributive mechanisms, like a fixed maximum number of contribution years and a ‘best year’ rule for
calculating benefits in many countries (Myles 2002). The general tightening of the relationship
between earnings and benefits and the associated ideal of ‘actuarial fairness’ that is being pursued
in many countries are recognised as potentially disfavouring women (Jefferson 2009). In this
context child credits can be motivated as providing compensation to women and justified by
policymakers as a relatively transparent and effective means of rewarding women for their socially
desirable efforts to care for children.
However, it is debatable whether child credits can unambiguously be portrayed as ‘women-
friendly’ and progressive from a gender-equality perspective (Mo¨hring 2018, Sta˚lberg et al.
2005). The ambiguity can be related to two competing notions of gender-equality found in historical
and current debates (Bay et al. 2015). The first notion is concerned with compensating women for not
living and behaving like men and with achieving ‘equality of result’ in the distribution of pension
income despite differences in labour market participation and wage levels between men and women.
Halrynjo et al.
243
This notion supports the provision of child credits to women with low earnings and small children.
The competing notion emphasises that the pension system ought to reward a balanced sharing of both
paid and unpaid work within the family and provide incentives for women to participate fully in the
labour market even when they have small children. Arguably child care credits go against this notion
by weakening incentives for women to maintain their labour force participation while they have
small children and by effectively subsidising couples with a traditional gendered division of labour.
Although many countries have introduced child credits into their pension systems to compensate
women for periods outside the labour market due to childcare responsibilities, existing research has
concentrated mainly on the institutional characteristics of these schemes (D’Addio 2012, Jefferson
2009), and occasionally also on their effects on pension income and gender differences (Halvorsen and
Pedersen 2019). Our study provides added value to the research field by asking how the idea of
providing child credits is perceived by the general public. We examine the level and structure of
support for child credits by analysing data from a representative survey of 3,080 Norwegian men and
women aged 30-53. Norway is ranked as one of the most gender-equal countries in the world1 and both
women and men are increasingly expected to participate full-time in the labour market, including when
they have young children. However, women still spend less time in the labour market than men, and in
policy debates at the elite level child credits have been framed as an unequivocally women-friendly
component of the pension system (Bay et al. 2015). Therefore, Norway represents an interesting case
for examining the level and structure of support for child credits among male and female citizens, and
particularly for investigating whether the pattern of support for child credits is consistently gendered or
whether there are internal divisions among men and women according to socio-economic status and
gender-equal versus gender traditional work-family adaptation. To our knowledge this is the first study
of popular attitudes towards child care pension credits in Europe, and we believe it fills an important
knowledge gap in current debates on gender-equality and social security.
The Norwegian context
Gender policy and gender-equality
Norway is, like the other Nordic countries, often seen as an ideal template for promoting a gender-
equal dual-earner/dual-carer family model (Esping-Andersen 2009, Gornick and Meyers 2008).
Policies that support the combination of employment and parenthood for men and women now
include generous parental leave schemes with a quota reserved for fathers and access to inexpen-
sive and high-quality childcare centres for children aged one and above. Enrolment rates in child-
care centres are close to 100 percent for children above two years of age.
However, there has also been a strong focus on parental choice and flexibility regarding
employment and childcare in Norway (Ellingsæter 2003). A key element in promoting parental
freedom of choice...
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