How do women fare under the adult worker model? : An analysis of individual poverty risks in the EU and the UK

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Since the early 2000s welfare states in Europe have shifted their primary focus from providing social protection against labour market risks to the activation of all individuals into employment. This adult worker paradigm assumes everyone should aim to follow the life-course of a 'typical' male worker, i.e., a man who works full-time for most of his working life and has minimal or no care responsibilities. This study (joint with Katrin Gasior and Daria Popova) compares the individual poverty risks of working-age women with different labour market statuses and job characteristics to the benchmark of typical male workers in the EU and the UK. Additionally, it examines how tax-benefit systems work to reduce the disparity in these risks. Our analysis utilizes the tax-benefit models EUROMOD and UKMOD to re-construct the individual incomes of both single and coupled women and men. Results show that only slightly more than one third of women in the EU fit the adult worker model, while this is the case for almost two thirds of men. Inactive and unemployed women are particularly vulnerable to poverty, but even women with the same characteristics as male ’typical’ workers have a higher individual poverty risk, as a result of the gender pay gap. Taxes and benefits cushion some of the gendered poverty gap, but they are only effective for women in full-time employment, leaving other groups, such as the unemployed, the self-employed, atypical workers, and inactive women, at a disadvantage.

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