Citizen's Pension
Jackie Ashley notes that the current state pension system provides most woman with a much smaller retirement income than men, with 92% of men receiving the full state pension and only 14% of women. The reason why is essentially that woman tend to leave the workforce for while to have and raise children, thus over their lifetimes pay less national insurance contributions. Also, though this is not directly relevant in the accounting, woman live longer and so a given amount of contributions goes less far.Now I'm sure many will point out that if women make less contibutions they deserve a smaller pension. Maybe. However such a policy is only going to make having children a less attractive proposition and down the road exacerbate the pensions 'crisis'. Already Britain's population is forecast to rise to just 64m by 2050, compared with 75m for France (and if the Right had their way and stopped immigration it would probably decline to about 59m).
posted by Matthew @ 6/23/2005 04:15:00 PM
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