Three quarters of AOW recipients have made supplementary pension arrangements

Nearly 2.5 million people in the Netherlands received the national old age pension (AOW) in 2008 and 73 percent also received supplementary pensions. More than 9 in every ten men and 6 in every 10 women had made provisions to supplement their AOW with pension schemes to which their employers contributed or they had made individual arrangements.

Women more often have small supplementary pensions

In 823 thousand cases, the amounts involved did not exceed 500 euro. Proportionally, far more women than men receive small supplementary pensions. Most women belonging to the AOW generation have never been active on the labour market in their entire lives or only on a part-time basis. As a result, they are not at all or only partly entitled to supplementary pensions. Most men are better off: three quarters of the 370 thousand AOW recipients receiving supplementary pensions of 1,500 euro or more were men.

Most AOW recipients are women

As women have a higher life expectancy than men, they are overrepresented among old age pensioners: 57 percent of them were women in 2008.

AOW recipients with supplementary pensions by monthly amount and gender, 2008*

Reinder Lok