Revenus individuels et dépendance financière des femmes et des hommes dans neuf pays européens en 2006

In the framework of the BGIA (Belgian Gender and Income Analysis) project, a methodology was developed to compute the individual income of women and men in order to illustrate existing gender differences, also in terms of financial dependency. This paper presents the gender distribution of individual income and financial dependency in nine European countries :Austria, Belgium, Spain, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. First, the data and methodology are explained. In a second step, we analyse the difference between the individual income and financial dependency rates of women and men as well as those individual characteristics that determine the gender gap. We also compare our individually-based financial dependency rates with the household-based at-risk-of-poverty rates as they are defined by the European Commission. In the third part of this paper, the analysis is topped off by the estimation of an econometric model of the probit type to identify those factors with the most decisive influence on the probability of being financially dependent. The pure marginal effects of all individual characteristics separately are computed by this method. In the fourth part, four new indicators are suggested to complete the core set of poverty and social exclusion indicators which are regularly produced for every EU country on a comparable basis (the so-called 'Laeken Indicators').