Gendered careers and retirement incomes of couples across Europe

Applying a linked lives perspective on the nexus between institutions and life-courses, this study examines how spouses’ gendered careers shape retirement incomes across 13 European countries. It connects contextual support for (a)symmetric employment constellations with the redistributiveness of Beveridge- and Bismarck-type pension systems across five life-course policy pathways. Based on 8,068 couple biographies from SHARELIFE (waves 3 and 7), Multichannel Sequence Analysis identifies male-breadwinner, 1.5-earner, and dual-earner constellations. Findings show that reconciliation policies and pension regimes jointly shape retirement income stratification. Dual-earner constellations are most common where defamilization is high and tend to achieve more equal and higher joint incomes. Male-breadwinner couples, despite specialization, often fall short in combined retirement income. In Bismarckian systems, dual-earners compensate individual deficits; 1.5-earners benefit from redistribution or institutional privilege but maintain within-couple inequality. Overall, the interplay of life-course policy contexts and pension design is key to understanding gendered income dynamics in later life.