Don't forget to call your mother tomorrow.

        And when you do, consider this:

        • Women make up 73 percent of the elderly poor, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis.

        • Fourteen percent of all women over age 65 are living below the poverty level, the center says.

        Mother's Day is supposed to be about celebrating and thanking our mothers for what they have sacrificed to raise us and provide for us.

        Financially, however, too many women are still going without.
       

Living longer, making less

        The center says 85 percent of the retirement income gap between men and women is attributable to differences in lifetime earnings, years worked and occupation chosen.

        From the outset, women seem set up to be financially worse off.

        First, they have traditionally earned less than men. Even though this gender gap is said to have shrunk over the years, the latest statistics from the National Committee on Pay Equity says women take home only 73 cents for every dollar a man does.

        And that's when she's working. Women typically take several years off to raise children or care for aging parents — during which time they forgo contributions to 401(k)s, pension plans and Social Security.

        The National Center for Policy Analysis' study Women as Retirees found that in employer-sponsored defined-contribution plans for people aged 54-62, accumulated balances average $123,625 for men and $25,557 for women.

        And yet women still are living an average of seven years longer than men. They earn less, save less and work less — but need more.
       

Taking fewer risks

        And those problems are further compounded by women taking fewer investment risks. That's not to say that day-trading will put women in comfortable retirement, but overloading on bonds or not venturing at all into the stock market won't help, either.

        Whereas 44 percent of working men in 1998 allocated their retirement portfolios mostly to stocks, 41 percent of women chose this investment strategy, the center says.

        And the differences in risk tolerance are more pronounced as one ages.

        So it's really no surprise then that 35 percent of working women say they are not confident they'll have enough money to live comfortably in retirement, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute's 2002 Retirement Confidence Survey.

        Twenty-four percent of men said the same thing.

        But the good news is that the younger and more educated a woman is, the more money she makes and saves — and the more risky and savvy an investor she is likely to be.

        And the same studies that show women are more conservative investors, show that they are more patient and less likely to have knee-jerk, money-losing reactions.

        So perhaps by the time today's children have to be reminded to call on Mother's Day, there won't be any glum statistics to consider.

        Contact Amy Higgins at 768-8373; ahiggins@enquirer.com; or 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202. She regrets that she cannot reply to all individual questions.
       

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