Possibility of claiming 60% of husband's state pension rights

Yes.

Who else were you getting at then? You are being unnecessarily offensive. Suggesting that Doodledog doesn’t read the posts carefully, asking how Cromwellian Protestants differed from the Taliban - are you serious?

It isn't all about you Germanshepherdsmum.

mokryna, I started work in 1970 and finally retired just a few years ago. I juggled work and bringing up a child, working up to less than a week before my due date and not returning until 11 weeks later as I had to have a C-section. I was married but my then husband wasn’t a provider so I might as well have been a single mother like you. My employer knew my situation and that I was very much dependent on my job. Like you I was not treated equally. So I did experience those times and my experience at the time wasn’t so very different from yours. I also know contemporaries of mine who elected not to work again after starting a family. I resent subsidising those who could, but chose not to, work and pay income tax and NI once their children were old enough. The time would have come when your single parent status was no longer relevant when job hunting. The days of women not being expected to work after marriage had long gone. My mother had to give up her job when she married in 1949 but she returned to work in about 1960. However this is simply defending myself against what is said or presumed. It doesn’t advance the argument.

PZ, if you’re having a dig at what I have said, I have never suggested that I am better than others but I do firmly believe that all members of society should contribute according to their individual ability and not expect to feed off others, by way of pension, health and other benefits or otherwise, if they are capable of supporting themselves. Not everyone can do that of course, owing to disability or having to care for sick relatives. That is what ‘each according to his ability’ is all about.

Doodledog, as always, puts forward a fair and reasonable argument without accusing those who have worked and paid their way of having a Puritan work ethic.

Attack the opinion if you will, but not the person expressing it.

Of course it isn't an assumption. Just read, in the posts on this thread, how people have described those who didn't work as they did.

I do think you need to read the posts more carefully. I did not ascribing any religious motive to people's viewpoints. I am suggesting it has gone on to affect our general outlook on life - paticularly what we should go without to be seen as being good and what we do which is often seen as being bad.

Perhaps you can tell me how Cromwellian Protestants differed from the Taliban.

But you are deciding on behalf of others that 'they see themselves as better', which is a massive assumption. As is ascribing a religious motive for people's viewpoints. Mine, for one, is very much a political view, although I wouldn't presume to speak for others.

The Taliban dig is just offensive, particularly in today's climate.

Doodledog the "digs" came well ahead of my post that was a clear view (not a dig) of what I think of those who see themselves as better than others because of how they worked, when they worked, etc.

Posters put those down who behaved as society had taught them: those were pretty low on the scale of unpleasant posts. We work to live; we do not live to work. Cromwell was a Protestant. On the continent, they don't seem to believe that work is a Godly virtue and not working a sin. They did not get taken over by Protestants (the Taliban of their day). It makes me wonder if having them did us any favours at all.

One thing I do think, however, is that legislation should not be retrospective. If someone has lived with the expectation of a pension based on their husband's, it is unfair to remove that when it is too late for them to do anything about it.

That is the grounds on which I object to the raising of the women's SPA, and the prescription payment discussion, and I think it should hold true across the piece. People need to be able to plan their lives as far as they can, and abrupt changes in financial legislation make that impossible.

afaik Invalid carer allowance only came in, in the late 70s and didn't include ill children. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought it only covered those children who would have been considered for institutionalised care?

Are we casting aspersions on one another's viewpoints, or debating the question of pensions?

It's a lot more civilised if digs and emotional language are left out of it.

I'm not sure who has suggested that work is their God. It was certainly never mine?. Most people work to provide for themselves and their families - it's not born of a Protestant Work Ethic if that is what the Cromwell dig is about. It's about contributing to society.

When we did the political compass quiz I had no hesitation in answering the question about 'From each according to ability, to each according to need'. I think that is a sound basis for a decent society.

I also think (although I can't speak for all on here) that most people are fully aware that their contributions don't go into a pension 'pot', and that we have already paid for previous generations. I just don't think that is relevant to this discussion. It is the system we have (not necessarily the best one, but there's not much we can do about that), and to expect to get something back is not greedy or unreasonable.

Not thinking that women (or anyone) who has chosen not to work because their spouse could 'afford to' pay for them (albeit on one set of contributions between two) is not at all the same thing as wanting or wanting to allow people to live in poverty, never mind 'extreme poverty'. That is another emotive attempt at undermining an argument, and is not a fair one.

It is not a binary choice, as I'm sure you are aware, Maisie. Those people who have been supported by their partners during their 'working lives' could continue to be supported by them in retirement for instance, or there could be a combination of pensions based on contributions and old age payments to all. There are various options that would be a lot fairer than the current system.

In any case, there could and should be a safety net for everyone to ensure that they nobody spends their old age in poverty, extreme or otherwise.

It is interesting that whenever the question of money and older people comes up there are those who want to means test everything so that older people who are not rich have 'extras' taken away until they are reduced to living at a very basic level, and yet these are often the very people who support paying to those who have been able to afford not to work when they could have done so. The two things don't sit right with me.

Pippa
What do you mean by a 'cromwellian' attitude to work ?

Doodledog

Dinahmo

What about those women who stayed at home in order to look after seriously ill children or perhaps in order to look after a sick parent?

I think the carer's allowance includes an NI element, so they would be covered by that (rightly).

It does now, but it didn't for the women who were paying the 'small stamp'.

One thing that people don't realise is that their NI contributions didn't go towards their future pensions. Beveridge's intention was that NI should work like an insurance scheme and pay for future pensions, but that was never implemented. NI contributions, if they were ever ringfenced for the payment of pensions (which I actually doubt) , went on paying current pensioners. There is no direct connection at all between what we paid in in our working lives and what we got out when we retired. It's a fiction which it suits governments to foster.

The essential thing to understand about national finances is that state spending is not constrained by the money the state takes from its citizens by way of taxation (and NI is just another tax). Since the UK came off the Gold Standard in 1972 it has been free to issue as much money as it considers necessary to cover state expenditure.

So the question of how much money is expended by the state in pensions (and other state benefits) has been as much a political choice as a practical one. A key consideration could be whether or not a government considers that it would be right or wrong to support citizens in their old age and those who are unable to earn enough to support themselves.

While I understand how people can feel resentful of those who haven't been in gainful employment, or who made smaller contributions in the past; seeing it as unfair that they have not, apparently 'earned' a pension I can see another moral dimension for the state. That of ensuring that none of its citizens live in extreme poverty. Though, once again,to ensure this is a political choice.

As others have said; there were different expectations of the financial relationships within a marriage at the time that the 'small stamp' was introduced. Even in the 70s expectations were that a married woman would work until she started a family and then give up work to rear the children, being supported by her husband. This has changed radically since then.

I'd just add that if a woman chose to stay at home to raise her family was she any less value to society than the person she would have had to have paid to look after them if she went out to work?

I do feel that some have an almost Cromwellian attitude to work on this thread. We know those getting the pension while "only" working as homemakers were doing nothing wrong. We know that society wasn't set up for women to earn the same as a man, have the same education or expect to climb up any ladder equally. Some women had to work, but those were the conditions under which they did it.

As I said before, social mores change; they could easily change again. The richer countries of the world have lower and lower birth rates.

Are you going to say the same about working as you have on here if the government nudges changes that can raise the birthrate but mean less working life? We don't know what the social norm will become for, say, our great-grandchildren. What will you say to them? Having a family has been what we did for thousands of years. Having education, equality and choice are new. Our GGCs may not give that up but they may choose not to make work their God.

Dinahmo

What about those women who stayed at home in order to look after seriously ill children or perhaps in order to look after a sick parent?

I think the carer's allowance includes an NI element, so they would be covered by that (rightly).

Pippa @ 6 pm.the system has changed over the years.
I must be well out of date.
My husband ia 8 years younger than me so I know I'm likely to go first. I know he would be able to claim part of my Local Govt. pension but amazed that this also applies to my Govt. Pension.
We both worked mostly fulltime for most of our working years.

That's a fair point, mokryna. I do remember sexism at work in the 70s, but I didn't have my children until long after that, and by then things had changed.

Germanshepherdsmum

Having worked full time and paid full NI for many years I have always considered it grossly unfair that women could claim a state pension even if they had never worked outside the home, or elected to pay the ‘married women’s stamp’. Rather like the people who spend all their money and then end up in a care home being paid for by the local authority (i.e. taxpayers)/other residents who lived more prudently. I shall now duck but am entitled to my opinion.

I don’t think people should judge women who worked through the late 60s and early 70s unless they experienced it themselves.

I am from a working class background and I can only speak of my experience. While working for the gas board, remember ‘73 equal pay, men in the department I worked in, earned more, I asked for equal pay, not possible because they came in an hour earlier (and left an hour earlier). I said I was prepared to the do the same, no not possible, it was for men.

Later, I was pregnant and was told, by the head of my department, a woman, that it was embarrassing the men in my department and should leave before my dates. True true true. I went round asking all the men, they disagreed, they thought it was wonderful. So I didn’t leave until 6 weeks before birth.

Another place, after I had had my DD, I went for an interview, I was told I had the job but as a one parent mother they couldn’t give it to me. I had a childminder and two grandmothers but it was a nono.

The jobs were not available nor was the pay, yes I paid the low rate and I brought up the children. Electricity was not cheaper because I was a single parent woman.

There are always people who take advantage of the system but I still feel feel the system is to blame, enforce equal pay and opportunities.

I do not think that married women working was quite as unusual as you suggest, in the 1950s. I was born in the 1950s, my mother retuned to work in the early 50s when my youngest sister was about 3.

You may well be right - I was born in 59, so just a child in the 60s, and can only vaguely remember that all my friends' mums didn't work. My mum always said that it was virtually impossible for women to work when we were little, as there was just no childcare - it only worked out for women whose own mothers were willing and able to help out.

I agree with you Monika. My mother was born in 1931 and worked full-time for most of her life as a secretary, apart from 11 years when my sisters and I were young. My maternal grandmother also worked for most of her life, as her husband left her. It never occurred to me that staying at home could be an option.

Doodledog The NI voluntary payments only cover pension contributions, they do not cover anything else, so they equal the amount of a working person's NI payment that goes towards the pension, so there is no subsidising going on. The rest of the NI payment goes towards sickness benefit, unemployment benefit etc, which those paying voluntary payments are not entitled to.

I was made redundant into early retirement in my early 50s. I tried to get back to work but couldn't, but instead of claiming any unemployment pay, I just paid the voluntary payment and immersed myself in voluntary work. I probably saved those paying full stamp a lot of money overall and on the whole earned my pension other ways.

I do not think that married women working was quite as unusual as you suggest, in the 1950s. I was born in the 1950s, my mother retuned to work in the early 50s when my youngest sister was about 3.

Had husbands, not at husbands.

I suppose that many of those women who stayed at home at husbands who could afford to keep them there. Imagine having to explain why one spent x amount on a pair of shoes rather than y? Or having to ask for the money to buy them in the first place?

Doodledog "what was stopping her generation from going to work?"

Ageism perhaps? When I was 40 back in 1987 I was told several times by agencies when job hunting that I was too old.

I remember my own mother joining an adult education class. They had to write an essay, which she did but her's was just a page long. She came home after that class, rather unsure of herself because the others had written a lot more. The teacher was fine about it but she felt insecure and stopped going.

My father taught her to trace documents, something that was done in the past. She got a job at the local authority but eventually worked at Queen Mary College until she started to make mistakes (early onset alzheimers). I doubt that many women were in her position - having a husband who could train her to do skilled work.

kissngate

I could never understand why my Mil received full state pension when she only had 11 years contributions. She also received a considerable uplift when Fil died, your article goes a long way to explaining why.

Well she had at least one child so probably got credited with NI for at least 16 years so that gives her 27 years. You used to only need 30 years for a full pension as a woman so if she had 2 children it would be easy for her to get a full pension or if she had other caring responsibilities.