Over 2m people receive less than £100 per week from state pensions
More than 2m Brits receive less than £100 per week from state pension payments it has been revealed.
Data analysed by Hargreaves Lansdown showed that millions of British pensioners are paid under the full state pension rate, which stands at £179.60 per week for those who retired after April 2016 and £137.60 per week for those who reached pension age before.
Helen Morrissey, senior pension and retirement analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown said: “We often talk about State Pension in terms of the maximum amount of money you can receive but data shows there are still many who receive far less than this.”
According to Morrissey many pensioners get a “nasty shock” when they realise that they are not entitled to the full state pension rate as they were not aware of the eligibility criteria.
Workers have to have 35 years worth of National Insurance credits to qualify for the full state pension, meaning that those who have taken time out the workplace, lived abroad or earned under the threshold for paying NI could be penalised.
Under the old pensions scheme workers could be contracted out of receiving a full state pension if their employers paid lower national insurance contributions on their behalf, but topped up the employees pay.
The data found that women are far more likely than male counterparts to receive less than the full state pension amount with 1.7m women and just 465,000 men getting under £100 per week.
Read more: Pandemic stretches gender pension gap to nearly £200,000