Women have a substantially lower income in retirement than men and the older they are the worse the situation, says the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) in a report released Tuesday.

Women age 65 and older have 25 percent lower income than men and by the time they reach 80 the gap widens to 44 percent, according to the report, "Shortchanged in Retirement, The Continuing Challenge to Women’s Financial Future," which was produced with BNY Mellon Investment Management.

Women are 80 percent more likely than men to be impoverished at age 65 and older, while women between the ages of 75 and 79 are three times more likely than men to live in poverty, the study said.

“It is well documented that the nation faces a retirement savings crisis, but the pain is particularly severe for women because we need a bigger retirement nest egg than men thanks to our longer life expectancy,” says Diane Oakley, NIRS executive director and report co-author. “This new data is troubling—it shows that a woman’s nest egg is substantially smaller than a man’s and that we’re not making real headway toward closing the retirement gender gap.

“Women are financially disadvantaged because we still earn less than men and we typically take time out of our careers for caregiving—both of which reduce our ability to prepare for retirement. As a result, more women are spending their retirement years working,” Oakley says.

Labor force participation among women aged 55 to 64 climbed from 53 percent in 2000, to 59 percent in 2015. Women may be working longer in order to make up for lower retirement savings over their careers and to offset investment losses from the recession, the report says.

Steps should be taken to strengthen Social Security benefits, increase automatic enrollment in retirement plans, increase state-sponsored savings plans and increase defined contribution eligibility for part-time workers, says the study, which was based on U.S. Census Bureau data. The NIRS is a nonprofit educational and research center on retirement issues.

The advocacy group called for a seven-point plan to bring in more money for elderly women so fewer will have to face poverty in their retirement years:
 
1. Strengthening Social Security benefits for women.
2. Increasing retirement plan coverage through auto enrollment in individual retirement accounts. 
3. Expanding the utilization of the saver's credit.
4. Increased development of state-sponsored savings plans.
5. Increasing defined contribution plan eligibility for part-time workers.
6. Providing spousal protections in defined contribution accounts.
7. Expanding defined benefit pension plans.
 
Ted Knutson contributed to this article.