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Women Face Pension Poverty
By Hilary Osborne, Guardian Unlimited
United
Kingdom
October 20, 2005
Women are failing to adequately save for a pension and millions face poverty in retirement, according a report published today.
Survey pensions provider Scottish Widows found that men of all ages were more likely to put money into a scheme than women, and once children arrived the gap between the sexes widened.
While 52% of men said they were saving for retirement, just 31% of women were doing the same, and one in two women said they had stopped saving when they had children.
As a result, just 15% of mothers with children aged under five were paying into a scheme, compared with 50% of fathers of children the same age.
In a foreword to the report, Baroness Hollis of Heigham said: "Too many women believe (often wrongly) that their partner will provide for them.
"They believe too that the children's need for trainers today takes precedence over some undefined needs 30 years on, that it is "selfish" to squirrel money away today that is needed by the family.
"They are baffled, along with most people, by the complexity of pension structures, and they reassure themselves (again often wrongly) that if the man in their life won't provide, then the state will."
Currently, around two-thirds of Britain's poorest pensioners are female, and the secretary of state for work and pensions, David Blunkett, has suggested that reforms will focus on giving retired women a fairer deal.
Responding to the Scottish Widows report, Help the Aged said as well as failing to save into their own schemes, women were being let down by the state pension scheme.
"The existing contributory pension system is unfair because it penalises women who take time out from their careers to care for family or who work part-time, reducing their overall pension pot in retirement," said Kate Jopling, the charity's senior public affairs officer.
"Any reforms to the pension system which the Turner commission puts forward must address both the widespread poverty and inequality that exists among pensioners today." New figures published today suggest that the pressure on state pensions could continue to increase, as the UK population becomes gradually older.
The number of people of state pension age could increase by 9.3% from 11.1 million in 2004 and 12.2 million in 2010, according to projections by the government actuary's department (GAD).
It said the number of people over pensionable age could hit 15.3 million by 2031 and 17.5 million by the middle of the century.
By 2007 the population of people of state pensionable age is projected to exceed the number of children and by 2031 is predicted to be almost four million higher.
And GAD predicted that life expectancy at birth will rise from 76.7 years in 2004 to 81.4 years in 2031 for men, and from 81.1 years in 2004 to 85.0 years in 2031 for women.
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