Higher and Lower rate of State Pension,. This really needs changing

No-one is surprised.
What is surprising on a site primarily aimed at older women is the disparaging comments and insinuations made about women who, through choice or otherwise, stayed at home for a number of years to bring up their own children.

As I keep saying, pensions are a simple transaction. If you pay in you get out. It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do to contribute to society as pensions are based on contributions. Also - working parents can make other contributions to society too, as well as working, bringing up children and running homes.

I am not attacking anyone. I do believe that people can choose how to live their lives but not that they should be able to expect others to pay for those choices.

Looking after a baby is one thing, but when children are at school there is no reason why parents can’t work. If they choose not to they can’t expect to get the same pension as those who do.

What I am asking is what people thought would be the result of taking time out of paying contributions or paying a lower stamp, and why they seem surprised that it is a lower pension than someone who paid more in? How was the married woman’s stamp ‘sold’ to people? Why wasn’t it obvious that it would result in a lower pension? These are genuine questions, not attacks.

Gin
As I didn't achieve the 39 years required for a full old State Pension, I don't expect one and am not complaining about that, but some of the comments on here do show an absolute lack of understanding of how things were then for married women before and after they had a family and in fact a disregard for the contributions they may have made to society in general (unpaid).

Were men ever asked about childcare arrangements when they went for a job interview? Of course not.

Well, maybe expecting others to pay for the society you live in has a moral element

That is an attack on those women who found that staying at home and bringing up their own children was really the only viable option at that time.
Just because they were not out at work for however many years, earning money and paying a stamp, does not mean they were not making a valuable contribution to society in many ways.

Again, it’s not a moral issue. Well, maybe expecting others to pay for the society you live in has a moral element, but as far as pensions are concerned it’s straightforward. You pay in and you take out. If you don’t pay for nine years, you lose nine years worth of pension. If you paid a lower stamp you get a lower pension.

It’s made complicated because of contracting out, and because the SPA changed, as did the ability to pay into SERPS and claim widows’ pensions, so women who have paid every year they could still get different amounts paid at different ages. It will even out eventually but in the meantime there are casualties. They could have been predicted and mitigations put in place, but weren’t. If this had happened to men’s pensions I wonder if more would have been done but we’ll never know.

I smile at some of these comments and the lack of historical knowledge. I worked for the government and had to resign as married women were not employed. I then brought up three children working part time to fit in with childcare duties.

Because I worked part time I just paid the married women stamp which does not contribute towards pension. My state pension is low and no occupational pension because pt workers were not allowed to join pension schemes in the jobs I did.

When the children were older I worked full time but never had the chance to build up a pension as OH job meant we moved every three years. We all have different stories and have often worked as second class employees because of gender.

Doodledog

Who has said ‘lazy’, ‘feckless’ or ‘self-indulgent’?

It’s not a moral issue- a pension is a contribution-based thing. Don’t you think that someone who paid in for nine years more than someone else should get more back? What is the point of paying in if not?

Someone who paid in for 3 years more than me will get about £65 a week more.

Nandalot

*Cumbrian123*, yes I did take a year off with my first child. In the days I am talking about it was not done, frowned upon even, to work with a young child. In fact, when I applied to do a PGCE the first college I applied to wouldn’t even consider my application because I had a child and actually wrote this to me. Fortunately, not all colleges were the same and I eventually found a suitable one. I am just saying it was not quite the same situation in those days. Perhaps you are younger than me!

Perhaps you are younger than me!

I have a feeling that many on here may be much younger than some of us Nandalot and the world we inhabited then is beyond their comprehension. I really can't imagine leaving a two week old baby in a nursery in order to go back to work.
Perhaps some people didn't move far from their homes, either and had help.

Some of us spent time in school as volunteers, too, of course, and we had to perch our backsides on those tiny chairs as we helped children with their reading, craft etc. before I went back to college then work as soon as I was able to.

Whatever happened to the Sisterhood 😂

silverlining48

It was expected that women gave in their notice in late pregnancy. There was no maternity leave, pay and no return to your job. No nurseries to look after children if they were able to get another job and grandparents did not generally help with childcare.
There was little choice in the matter.
,

All true silverlining
Grandparents hundreds of miles away or else working themselves, no nurseries. It was a different word then.

sat around doing nothing very rude, CumbrianNan

In fact, it's so easy to go out to work and leave the hard work of looking after children to someone else.

Who has said ‘lazy’, ‘feckless’ or ‘self-indulgent’?

It’s not a moral issue- a pension is a contribution-based thing. Don’t you think that someone who paid in for nine years more than someone else should get more back? What is the point of paying in if not?

Bringing up children rarely involves “sitting around doing nothing”. You’re quite right Cumbrian, you reap what you sow, in childcare perhaps more than in many other activities.

It was expected that women gave in their notice in late pregnancy. There was no maternity leave, pay and no return to your job. No nurseries to look after children if they were able to get another job and grandparents did not generally help with childcare.
There was little choice in the matter.
,

Cumbrian123, yes I did take a year off with my first child. In the days I am talking about it was not done, frowned upon even, to work with a young child. In fact, when I applied to do a PGCE the first college I applied to wouldn’t even consider my application because I had a child and actually wrote this to me. Fortunately, not all colleges were the same and I eventually found a suitable one. I am just saying it was not quite the same situation in those days. Perhaps you are younger than me!

If you want more money, go out and work for it.
All these folks taking years out to raise kids and now moaning because whilst they sat around doing nothing , some of us took 2 weeks off after giving birth then back to work.
You reap what you sow.

I think many didn’t fully comprehend the pension consequences of a complicated working life. They didn’t necessarily follow a straightforward career path. That’s not to say they were lazy or feckless

BigBopper

Nandalot

I always feel short changed that my child rearing days were not taken into account. I did not receive child benefit until my second child was born. I had my children young. My best friend had her children late and got child benefit for the first as the rules had changed. Any years with child benefit paid count towards the pension years so I have missed out on those first years.

I also missed out on extra pension payments as I took 9 years off work to raise my family so I do not get as much as I would have if I had not stopped working.

I took time off too because I thought that was best for my children and for the whole family and childcare was non-existent anyway.

Apparently that is now considered by some to have been self-indulgent.

Nandalot

I always feel short changed that my child rearing days were not taken into account. I did not receive child benefit until my second child was born. I had my children young. My best friend had her children late and got child benefit for the first as the rules had changed. Any years with child benefit paid count towards the pension years so I have missed out on those first years.

I also missed out on extra pension payments as I took 9 years off work to raise my family so I do not get as much as I would have if I had not stopped working.

Grannynannywanny

Excuse me if I’ve got it wrong. Will pensioners whose only income is the old state pension not be entitled to pension credit to top it up to new state pension rate? So they will still be entitled to the winter fuel allowance.

I get the full womens state pension as I paid the full stamp. The thing that is stopping me getting pension credit is that I receive a small private pension from my late husband which takes me just over the threshold for benefits but I still pay income tax on my state pension and husband's private pension. I also get the old type state pension as I retired before the new system came into play.

I always feel short changed that my child rearing days were not taken into account. I did not receive child benefit until my second child was born. I had my children young. My best friend had her children late and got child benefit for the first as the rules had changed. Any years with child benefit paid count towards the pension years so I have missed out on those first years.

I am asking this in an entirely non-combative way, but what did people think would happen if they paid a lower rate of contributions? Why did they think that married women should pay less than men, (or than unmarried women) if they didn't realise that they would get a lower pension in return? When I got married (1980) I don't think there was an option to pay less, but I can't imagine why anyone would do so and expect to get the same return as if they'd paid in full.

Paperbackwriter I understand why you feel you'd be better off if you hadn't worked. There is little incentive to save or pay in when doing so means that you are not eligible for things that others get given.

Those who paid the full stamp got no credits for child-rearing either, incidentally. Considering that they still ran houses and raised children as well as working, surely they should have been credited too?

kibera10

I think it will mostly be females on the lower pension - because if they worked and paid the 'married woman's rate' of National Insurance this didn't count towards a pension (or to sickness benefit or unemployment benefit). Maybe these should still get the winter fuel allownce.

I was one of those who was advised to opt for the 'married women's rate'. It adds up to very little. Honestly, I looked into the sums and I'd have been better off if I'd never ever worked - I'd have at least got credit for all those child-raising years. I doubt I'll qualify for the winter fuel allowance as my husband is still here and earning but we've had a rocky time recently and we were close to separating last year. If that happens I'll probably be on the streets.

Brahumbug

Doodledog

I have said it earlier in the thread as well!😁

.

Doodledog

I have said it earlier in the thread as well!😁

Brahumbug

knspol
What Grannymel2 is referring to is SERPS and S2P which is based in earnings and paid on top of the basic pension, so she is correct. Many on the old pension receive far more than the new pension maximum.

This is what I was saying upthread. SERPS and widow’s pensions can take the old pension to well above the new.

I too was born in 1953 and was contracted out so I had to wait till November 2017 to claim my SP.
No-one explained at the time what being contacted out meant other than to make it sound good - i.e. you were paying lower NI contributions. No-one explained that this would result in a reduced SP.
If I had known this I would have invested a bit of money into a private pension. The only way for me to increase my SP was to pay for voluntary contributions for years where my NI record was incomplete. That was fortuitous and I will be looking into whether to make more voluntary contributions in the hope that I can increase my SP again.