Two young researchers from NORFACE Governance projects presented their work during the first Early Career Workshop: DEEPEN team member Sara Gonzales and Ghufran Khir Allah from the QUEST project (Qualify Unification in Europe for Shifting Trust). The EC workshop is a fantastic opportunity for young researchers to present their work and get feedback on papers in the early stage of development, as well as to meet other young scholars.
At the event, DEEPEN team member Sara Gonzales presented a paper written with DEEPEN researcher Prof. Juan J. Fernández, called “Socio-Economic Gaps in Workers’ Participation in Funded Pension Programs in Six European Countries.” The researchers explore whether participation in private plans is concentrated in certain groups or spread uniformly across society. To light up the social selectivity of private pension plans and potential changes in that selectivity over time, they analyze six waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) in six European countries: Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Spain. Specifically, they focus on participation gaps in individual and occupational plans across six dimensions: gender, education, birth cohort, social class, company size, and risk profile.