At older ages, most people are supported by pension systems that provide payments based on prior contributions. An important, but neglected, aspect of inequality in how much people receive in pensions is the number of years they live to receive their pension. We examine inequality in lifetime-accumulated pensions and show the importance of mortality for understanding inequalities in pension payments, and contrast it to inequalities in working-age earnings and yearly pension payments among older adults. In contrast to most previous research on old-age inequality comparing different social groups, we focused on total-population-level inequality. Using Swedish register data covering the retired population born from 1918–1939, we found that lifetime pensions are much more unequal than pre-retirement earnings and yearly pensions. Our findings also show that mortality explains more than 50 percent of the inequality of lifetime pensions within cohorts, and plays an important role in explaining changes in inequality across cohorts (192 percent among men and 44 percent among women). Pension policies can affect lifetime pension inequality, but such effects are limited in magnitude unless they directly affect the number of years of receiving pensions.

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到了老年，大多数人都得到养老金系统的支持，该系统根据之前的缴款提供付款。人们领取养老金数额不平等的一个重要但被忽视的方面是他们领取养老金的寿命。我们研究了终生累积养老金的不平等，并展示了死亡率对于理解养老金支付不平等的重要性，并将其与工作年龄收入和老年人每年养老金支付的不平等进行了对比。与之前大多数比较不同社会群体的老年不平等研究不同，我们关注的是总人口水平的不平等。使用涵盖 1918 年至 1939 年出生的退休人口的瑞典登记数据，我们发现终身养老金比退休前收入和年度养老金更加不平等。我们的研究结果还表明，死亡率解释了队列内终身养老金不平等的 50% 以上，并且在解释队列间不平等的变化方面发挥着重要作用（男性为 192%，女性为 44%）。养老金政策可以影响终生养老金不平等，但这种影响的程度有限，除非直接影响领取养老金的年限。

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