AHV/AVS Income Splitting & Child-Rearing Credits — Switzerland's Statutory Pension Gender-Gap Mechanism

Switzerland's 10th AHV/AVS Revision, in force since 1 January 1997, built two mechanisms into the state old-age pension (1st pillar): "Splitting" (Einkommensteilung) of spouses' AHV-relevant earnings 50/50, and Erziehungsgutschriften (child-rearing credits, currently three times the annual minimum AHV pension) for parents caring for a child under 16, plus a parallel Betreuungsgutschriften credit for caring for a dependent relative. Both are administered automatically by the Federal Social Insurance Office (BSV/OFAS) with no application or means test.

To address the gender pension gap within the state (1st pillar) pension system by ensuring equal recognition of both spouses' contributions and of unpaid child-rearing and care work.

Splitting is applied automatically on divorce, widowhood, or when both partners draw a pension, summing both spouses' AHV-relevant earnings for the years of marriage and crediting each individual account with half. Child-rearing credits are awarded for each year a parent has custody of a child under 16, split equally between married parents. The mechanism has run unchanged in design for over 25 years.

Despite this mechanism, Switzerland's overall gender pension gap remains among the highest in Europe: cited at roughly 33-37% by SWI swissinfo.ch and confirmed to exceed 30-40% by OECD's Pensions at a Glance 2025. The gap is driven almost entirely by the second-pillar occupational pension, which is not subject to splitting or credits and penalises the part-time work and career breaks disproportionately taken by women.

Splitting and child-rearing credits are a structural, well-evidenced mechanism addressing the first-pillar share of the gender pension gap, but only a partial solution since the larger occupational-pension gap remains untouched by the policy.