Women Lose Financially Throughout Their Lives, With the Biggest Gap in Retirement

Poland’s low reported gender pay gap hides a much wider difference in total income, according to an analysis of almost 370,000 personal income tax returns filed for 2025.

Women’s median income stood nearly 21% below men’s. Among married couples who filed jointly, the gap reached 31.7%, almost six times the 5.5% difference recorded among people filing individually.

The analysis by podatnik.info used tax data covering more than employment income. It included pensions, copyright income and income from personally performed work. That broader measure produced a deeper gap than the wage difference typically shown in official statistics, even when researchers compared medians rather than averages.

Recent Eurostat figures show that Poland’s unadjusted hourly gender pay gap narrowed from 5.9% in 2023 to 4% in 2024. Across the European Union, it fell from 12% to 11.1%. But the tax-return analysis showed that women’s financial position looked much weaker when all reported income was considered.

The smallest difference appeared among individual filers, a group that includes many single people. In jointly filing marriages, however, men reported higher incomes in almost two out of three couples. Women accounted for an average 39.5% of the couple’s income. Anna Ciecierska of podatnik.info said the pattern resembled a household in which one salary forms the financial base and the other provides an important but smaller supplement. The analysis linked the difference to situations such as women working part time or taking breaks to provide care.

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In practice, it resembles an arrangement in which one salary is the foundation of the household’s finances, while the other is an important but smaller supplement.