2. Public expenditure on State Pensions in the UK is among the lowest in the OECD; this reflects the fact that the main state pension for current pensioners is nearly £40 per week less than the government’s own poverty threshold (the means-tested minimum guarantee Pension Credit)
3. The new Single Tier Pension is just above the single rate of Pension Credit but due to transitional rules, it will be decades before women generally receive as much state pension as men.
4. Private pension schemes, promoted and subsidised by UK governments, are the main reason for the gender gap in pensions, placing women at a disadvantage due to their domestic roles and lower pay.
5. Among 65–74 yr olds, median private pension wealth is £182,400 for men & £25,000 for women (meaning these women have just 1/7 of the private pension wealth of men)
Among the population as a whole women’s median pension wealth is £6,000, barely 1/4 of the £22,600 held by men
6. Auto-enrolled private pensions, while including all employers, exclude low-paid employees and like other private pensions, make no allowance for periods of caring, hence perpetuating the gender gap in pensions.
8. We conclude that a Voluntary Earnings related State Pension Addition (VESPA) – an auto-enrolled option that is fully portable and allows carer credits – would be simpler and would better meet women’s need for extra pension saving.
10. For those who retired before April 2016, the full amount of the Basic State Pension (BSP) remains nearly £40 per week below the level of means-tested (single rate) Pension Credit.
11. Older retired women, in particular, are less likely than men to receive the full amount because of legacy rules that treated married women as dependent on their husbands
12. Women’s domestic roles are crucial to their pension disadvantage
Women’s lesser chance of being in employment, especially full time, has been their key handicap in accumulating private pensions and is strongly associated with marriage and motherhood
13. The gender differential in private pension wealth is substantial among those aged over age 65 (see Tables 1 and 2). Among 65–74 year olds median private pension wealth is £182,400 for men and £25,000 for women (just 1/7 of the private pension wealth of men)
16. The Basic State Pension (BSP) fell relative to average earnings, from around 25% in
1979 to 16% by 2001, due to inadequate annual uprating, while the State Earnings Related Pension was substantially cut
17. This was particularly damaging for women
already in retirement since they typically derive a higher proportion of their income than men from the State Pension and other state benefits – as remains the case today (61% for women and 51% for men)
18. The gains for women were offset by the Coalition government’s acceleration of the raising of the State Pension Age (SPA), reaching 66 in October 2020 – nearly six years earlier than originally planned – and set to reach 67 by 2028
19. The rise in SPA was particularly rapid for women born in the 1950s, leaving them insufficient time to adjust their retirement plans. The government accepted the recommendation of the Cridland Review to bring forward the rise in SPA to 68 to 2037-9 instead of 2044-6
1🗣️"As we have heard, since 2010 at least an extra 400,000 pensioners have been pushed into poverty, and a generation of women born in the 1950s were betrayed" @SarahOwen_
3🗣️"The people who have written to me have done the right thing in life: they paid into the system and worked hard and now they want their Government to be there when they need it" @SarahOwen_