The gender pay gap is a hot topic in the presidential campaign, and President Barack Obama has been hammering on it, too. Women who work full-time, year-round, made just 79 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts in 2014, U.S. Census Bureau data shows.

But the injustice of the gender pay gap also impacts retirement security, and the numbers are appalling.

A woman who works full-time over a 40-year period loses $435,480 in lifetime income (today’s dollars) due to the wage gap, according to the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), a nonprofit legal and advocacy group. Put another way, the typical woman needs to work 11 years longer than a man to achieve accumulated income parity.

The income gap translates directly to lower income from Social Security and pensions - since those benefits are determined by wage history - and it hampers the capacity of women to save for retirement. And since women typically live longer than men, savings often must be stretched across more years of retirement. That makes pay inequity a retirement security double whammy.

“When you put together all these factors, it’s not a surprise that women are left with greater economic insecurity in retirement than men,” said Fatima Goss Graves, senior vice president of NWLC.

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Reuters