National Pension Service, Sincheon-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul. photo = Yonhap News
Housewives do not have to join the National Pension because they have basically no income. However, in many cases, after the spouses retire in the future, they voluntarily join the National Pension Plan to cover their old-age income together. According to the statistics of the National Pension Service, the number of beneficiaries for married couples is increasing significantly every year. The amount of supply is also increasing. If you are a housewife, would it be advantageous to join the National Pension Plan unconditionally?
Experts advise that you should carefully examine the expected amount of your husband’s national pension. After the death of the husband, the spouse can receive the survivor’s pension.
A couple in Busan who receives 4.35 million won per month in the national pension alone
Couple A, who live in Haeundae-gu, Busan, received a national pension of 4,354,109 won as of July. It is the highest amount among married beneficiaries. The couple joined the National Pension Plan in January 1988, when the National Pension System was implemented. The husband paid the national pension premium until August 2013 and the wife until December 2014. The current amount of benefits is 2,223,995 won per month for wives with a long subscription period, more than the 2,13,114 won for husbands.
According to the National Pension Service, the number of beneficiaries like Mr. A and his wife was 470,048 couples in July this year. 297,473 pairs in 2017, 298,733 pairs in 2018, 355,382 pairs in 2019, and 472,467 pairs in 2020.
The combined average pension for married couples is 837,411 won per month. The number of couples receiving more than 3 million won a month in the combined national pensions of husbands and wives was the first of three couples in 2017, followed by 6 in 2018, 29 in 2019, and 70 in 2020. done. The number of couples receiving more than 2 million won per month is 5826 couples, and the number of couples receiving more than 1 million won per month is 135,410 couples.
According to the results of the 8th ‘National Retirement Security Panel’ survey conducted by the National Pension Research Institute last year on 4531 households (7343 individuals) with household members over the age of 50 across the country, As for the ‘minimum cost of living in old age’, I thought that there should be 1166,000 won per month for an individual and 1,947,000 won for a couple. As of July, about 6,000 couples are receiving an amount that exceeds the couple’s minimum cost of living in retirement as the national pension.
If you choose a survivor’s pension, you may be able to waive your premiums.
However, whether that means that even housewives with no income should join the National Pension Service is a matter for further consideration. The current increase in the number of beneficiaries is believed to be due to the increase in the number of wives who have been entitled to benefits through compulsory membership as women’s social advancement has expanded since the 1990s.
Voluntary participation is a matter of choosing to join the National Pension Service, so you have to weigh the pros and cons. Survivors’ pension is the biggest variable. For example, if the beneficiary’s husband dies, the wife can receive the survivor’s pension, because the amount is greatly reduced depending on whether the wife receives the national pension.
According to the ‘duplicate benefit adjustment rules’, the remaining spouse can choose to either give up their old-age pension and receive a survivor’s pension, or receive an old-age pension plus part of the survivor’s pension.
First of all, survivors’ pension differs in the benefit rate according to the period of subscription. 50% of the old-age pension received by the deceased will be received if they have been insured for more than 10 years and less than 20 years, and 60% if they have been insured for more than 20 years. When the husband dies, the wife can receive 900,000 won for the survivors’ pension after joining for more than 20 years and receiving 1.5 million won a month.
If you choose the old-age pension you receive, you can receive an additional 30% of the survivor’s pension. The double payment rate was 20% before December 2016, and has since risen to 30%. If the survivor’s pension is 900,000 won, 270,000 won is set as an additional survivor’s pension when the individual pension is selected.
If your old-age pension is less than 630,000 won, it is advantageous to give up the old-age pension and receive a survivors pension. This is because even adding the amount of double payments does not reach the 900,000 won that can be received as a survivor’s pension.
If the monthly premium of 90,000 won, which is the minimum standard for receiving the national pension, is paid for 20 years, the monthly pension receipt is expected to be about 350,000 won. It becomes more advantageous to give up your own pension when your spouse’s monthly National Pension receipt exceeds 840,000 won. In this case, 20 years’ worth of insurance, equivalent to 21.6 million won, will be lost.
However, discussions are underway to raise the overlapping payment rate, so the situation remains to be seen. This is because the National Assembly is in the process of pushing for a bill to increase the double payment rate of the national pension to 40-50%. This is in line with the argument that the National Pension’s duplicate payment rate for survivors’ pensions should be raised to the level of 50% of other occupational pensions such as civil servants’ pensions.
If the double payment rate rises to 50%, it is believed that for a housewife who has paid 90,000 won per month for 20 years, it is advantageous to receive half of the survivors’ pension and her own pension until the spouse receives 1.17 million won or more of the national pension.
By Kang Jin-gyu, staff reporter josep@hankyung.com
