Micro Pensions for Women; Initiatives and Challenges in India.

In rapidly ageing countries, increased life expectancies threaten the poor and low-income workers. India is such a country. The number of people over sixty will rise from the present 90 million to an expected 200 million by 2030. Giving the changing demography, family structure and settlements the need for pension products is increasing. This counts particular for women since they live longer and have less opportunities to create a pension by lack of formal labour force participation. This paper focuses on recent initiatives taken in India to analyze the improvement of the pension coverage and its capacity to prevent women's old age poverty. How can the low pension coverage in India - in particular for low-income female workers in the informal economy -, be increased? The research focuses on new pension schemes introduced by the Indian Government and new micropension provisions by grass root non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and microfinance institutes (MFIs). Results from the case-study show, that only about 6 % of the clients of the Dhan Foundation (NGO) stated to have access to pension. This is in line with the national statistics. The pilot initiative for a micro pension program of the Dhan Foundation, show a clear positive result in willingness to pay for micro pensions among their mostly female clientele To improve the low coverage rate, micropensions could be of significant added value in the so called 'multi-pillar approach' that recognizes the complementarities between the state pension, the private sector and the civil society sector pension plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]