Control over money and the savings decisions of Canadian households

In most countries, men have more life insurance than women, and are more likely to be members of employer pension plans. However, little is known about savings behaviour within households, for example, the name under which assets are held. Private savings could counterbalance or exacerbate inequality in other forms of pension access. This is important both in itself and as a determinant of future bargaining power of spouses. In this paper, we use a unique dataset to study the effect of women's and men's control over finances on the probability of each spouse contributing to tax-sheltered Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSP).