1. Shoring Up Shortfalls: Women, Retirement and the Growing Gig Economy
Professor Jon Forman
University of Oklahoma College of Law
for the
Ninth Annual Employee Benefits & Social Insurance Conference
Boston, Massachusetts
October 18, 2019

2. Preface
Based on a joint research project with Professor Caroline Bruckner of the American University Kogod School of Business
Under a recently awarded grant from the TIAA Institute through the Pension Research Council/Boettner Center of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (PRC)

3. Overview
Focus on providing adequate retirement income for workers in the gig economy
Women in particular
Growing population of women earning income renting their homes (e.g., Airbnb), selling goods (e.g., Etsy), or performing care-taking services (e.g., Care.com)

4. Overview of the Project
Part I: Examine existing data sets on contingent and self-employed workers generally—and online platform economy workers in particular—in terms of gender and age
Part II: Literature review & summarize the factors that exacerbate the retirement income security challenges facing women
Including the pay gap & the retirement savings gap
e.g., student loan debt

5. Overview of the Project, cont.
Part III: Analyze policy options to:
1) Ensure that gig economy workers meet their self-employment tax obligations & earn their full Social Security benefits;
2) Encourage gig economy workers to participate in retirement savings plans & so enhance their retirement incomes; &
3) Provide additional financial literacy opportunities for women gig workers

6. Part I: Data Sets
U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)
Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED)
JPMorgan Chase Institute
Earnings and demographic data from a sample of 39 million Chase checking accounts that tracked payments from 128 online platforms to 2.3 million families from October 2012−March 2018
Whatever else we can find

7. Alicia H. Munnell, Geoffrey T. Sanzenbacher & Abigail N
Alicia H. Munnell, Geoffrey T. Sanzenbacher & Abigail N. Walters, How Do Older Workers Use Nontraditional Jobs (Boston College Center for Retirement Research Issue in Brief No , Oct. 2019),

8. Contingent & Alternative Work Arrangements in 2017 (BLS)
5.9 million contingent workers (3.8% of million American workers)
held temporary or impermanent jobs or contract arrangements
Alternative Work Arrangements
10.6 million independent contractors (6.9%)
2.6 million on-call workers (1.7%)
1.4 million temporary help agency workers
933,000 workers provided by contract firms
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangements—May 2017 ( USDL June 7, 2018),

9. Women Tend to Work Less and Earn Less Than Men
In 2017, the median annual earnings for full-time, year-round working men was $55,291 compared to just $45,097 for women (~ 82% of what men make)*
In 2016, fewer women (~ 57%) than men (69.2%) were part of the paid labor force, and women were more likely to work part-time (~ 25%) than employed men (12.4%)**
* Jessica Semega, Melissa Kollar, John Creamer & Abinash Mohanty, Income and Poverty in the United States: tbl.A-7 (U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports P60-266, September 2019),
** U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, Latest Annual Data, (last visited Oct. 4, 2019).

10. Women Tend to Work Less Years and Save Less for Retirement Than Men
Women tend to work fewer years than men
E.g., when men became eligible for Social Security in 2007, they typically had 10 more years in Social Security covered employment than women)*
Women have low financial literacy**
All in all, women do not save as much for retirement***
* Hilary Waldron, The Sensitivity of Proposed Social Security Benefit Formula Changes to Lifetime Earnings Definitions. 72(2) Social Security Bulletin, 1, 13 tbl. 5 (2012),
** Annamaria Lusardi & Carlo de Bassa Scheresberg, Financial Capability and Financial Literacy among Working Women: New Insights (TIAA Institute Research Dialogue, Mar. 2017),
*** Diane Garnick, Income Insights: Gender Retirement Gap (TIAA Institute, Oct. 2016), Jack VanDerhei, Retirement Savings Shortfalls: Evidence From EBRI’s 2019 Retirement Security Projection Model®, Employee Benefit Research Institute Issue Brief # 475 (Mar. 7, 2019).

11. Women in Retirement Women tend to live longer than men
E.g., these days, a 65-year-old man can expect to live, on average, until age 84, and a 65-year-old woman can expect to live, on average until age 86.5*
All in all, retirement-age women are more susceptible to income insecurity due to their lower lifetime incomes, longer life expectancies, and higher healthcare costs
* Social Security Administration, Benefits Planner/Live Expectancy, (last visited Aug. 19, 2019).

12. Social Security
For 2020, employees and employers each pay a Social Security payroll tax of 6.2% on up to $137,700 of wages, for a combined Old-Age and Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) rate of 12.4% (out of the total 15.3% in payroll taxes)
Self-employed workers pay an equivalent tax of 12.4% on up to $137,700 of net earnings
Social Security Administration, 2020 Social Security Changes, (last visited October 10, 2019).

13. Pension and IRA Options
Individual Retirement Account (IRA)
SEP (Simplified Employee Pension)
SIMPLE IRA and SIMPLE 401(k)
Qualified Plan
Defined Contribution Plan
Defined Benefit Plan

14. Two Major Retirement Income Problems for Gig Workers
Self-employed workers underreport self-employment income, resulting in lower Social Security benefits
Contingent and self-employed workers often do not have pensions or IRAs

15. Underreporting of Self-employment Earnings
Self-employed workers had a 63% noncompliance rate in 2008−2010*
These workers annually underreported around $125 billion in income taxes and $63 billion in self-employment taxes
Traditional employees had a 1% noncompliance rate
Underreporting leads to lower Social Security benefits
* Internal Revenue Service, Tax Gap Estimates for Tax Years 2008–2010 (Apr. 2016),

16. Contingent & Self-employed Workers Have Less Retirement Savings
In 2017, just 18.4% of contingent workers participated in an employer-sponsored pension, compared to 43.4% of traditional workers*
Another study found that doing nontraditional work consistently decreased retirement income by ~ 26%**
Having only a brief period doing nontraditional work reduced retirement income by ~ 6%
* U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangements—May 2017 tbl.9 (USDL , June 7, 2018),
**Alicia H. Munnell, Geoffrey T. Sanzenbacher & Abigail N. Walters. How Do Older Workers Use Nontraditional Jobs, (Boston College Center for Retirement Research Issue in Brief No , Oct. 2019),

17. About Us
Jonathan Barry Forman (“Jon”) is the Kenneth E. McAfee Centennial Chair in Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law,
See, e.g., Jonathan Barry Forman, Removing the Legal Impediments to Offering Lifetime Annuities in Pension Plans, 23(1) Connecticut Insurance Law Journal 31 (Fall 2016),
Caroline Bruckner is the Professorial Lecturer and Managing Director of the Kogod Tax Policy Center at the American University Kogod School of Business,
See, e.g., Caroline Bruckner & Annette Nellen, Failure to Innovate: Tax Compliance and the Growing Gig Economy 92(6) State Tax Notes (May 6, 2019), available at