Jonathan Guthrie
I wrote recently about an article by the FT’s Jonathan Guthrie that is packed with 10 bits of data that those of us who don’t have a pension provided us, need to understand.
Of course a lot of families will be looked after by residual DB pensions from private employment and pensions still-accruing from the public pensions, but most privately employed people would do to read the original which is here, or my blog that tries to capture Jonathan’s ten points. The blog is here.
I think this chart adds to work done by Prospect UK and most recently Alison Hatcher in Professional Pensions in pointing out that when kids arrive , women’s pensions don’t.
We hear a lot about the problems working people have when they take career breaks – at least in building up retirement income but very little about what can be done about it.
Yesterday I had tea with Andrew Young in Brighton. I have to remind myself he is not retired but “unemployed” as his linked in gravatar calls him! He spends more time thinking about pensions than most think tanks and he does so as a Dad and Grandad who has clocked up 77 years experience! Here is his solution
I had had the same concern but had not come up with the same solution. For me there should be awareness of both partners (whether married not) of pensions building up and what a woman gives up to have the children for the two of them. I said that if men can recognise the pension gap, they can share obligations and if the partnership breaks up pay compensation.
Andrew’s solution goes a stage further and suggests that in time we might have joint pensions from pooling two contributions in one arrangement. It is of course too radical to think through on a Monday morning and I’m sure there are people who can think of the ups and downs of pursuing this idea. If we are to make pensions equal to wife and husband (or partners) can’t we introduce a legal agreement to share them.
This would only work with the consent of both partners and could not be imposed upon them by law (I suppose), but if there are couples who take the pension wage cap seriously and pool income, why not pool pension entitlements in later lives. I fear we see a lot of marriages brake up before or at retirement but a legal agreement to share the pensions earned 50/50 seems to make sense.