A widow's pension is a payment from the government of a country to a person whose spouse has died.
Generally, such payments are made to a widow whose late spouse has fulfilled the country's requirements, including contribution, cohabitation, and length of marriage. [1]
During the Progressive Era, there was a proliferation of laws introducing widows' pensions (generally called "mothers' pensions) at the state level. [2]
At the federal level, the widow's pension was introduced in the Senate in 1930. [3] It was not especially uncommon for young women in Arkansas to marry Confederate pensioners; in 1937 the state passed a law stating that women who married Civil War veterans would not be eligible for a widow's pension. The law was later changed in 1939 to state that widows born after 1870 were not eligible for pensions.
In 1899, Congress approved a payment of $11,750 of widow's pension owed to Harriet Tubman. [1] [4]
In the United Kingdom, the Widow’s Pension was discontinued in 2001. [5] A widow's pension can be paid to childless widows aged 45 or over, or to those whose husband died before September 4, 2001. [6]
When it was offered, for a woman to qualify, her husband had to have paid 25 flat-rate contributions before April 6, 1975. [1]
In Israel in 2007, a court ruled that the female partner of a deceased lesbian was entitled to a widow's pension. [5]
In New Zealand, a widow's pension was introduced in 1911 to help families with no other way of supporting themselves.[ citation needed ]
In 1953, the Government of India launched the Widow Assistance Scheme. Under this scheme, a pension of ₹20 per month was provided to widows above 40 years of age. [7]
In the United States, a 401(k) plan is an employer-sponsored, defined-contribution, personal pension (savings) account, as defined in subsection 401(k) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Periodic employee contributions come directly out of their paychecks, and may be matched by the employer. This pre-tax option is what makes 401(k) plans attractive to employees, and many employers offer this option to their (full-time) workers. 401(k) payable is a general ledger account that contains the amount of 401(k) plan pension payments that an employer has an obligation to remit to a pension plan administrator. This account is classified as a payroll liability, since the amount owed should be paid within one year.
A pension is a fund into which amounts are paid regularly during an individual's working career, and from which periodic payments are made to support the person's retirement from work. A pension may be:
In the United States, Social Security is the commonly used term for the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program and is administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA). The Social Security Act was passed in 1935, and the existing version of the Act, as amended, encompasses several social welfare and social insurance programs.
In the United Kingdom, Bereavement Support Payments are paid to the husband/wife or partner of a person who has died in the previous 21 months. It replaced Bereavement Payment and Bereavement Allowance in April 2017, which had previously replaced Widow's benefit in April 2001.
Harold Wilson was appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom by Queen Elizabeth II on 16 October 1964 and formed the first Wilson ministry, a Labour government, which held office with a thin majority between 1964 and 1966. In an attempt to gain a workable majority in the House of Commons, Wilson called a new election for 31 March 1966, after which he formed the second Wilson ministry, a government which held office for four years until 1970.
The State Pension is an existing welfare benefit that forms part of the United Kingdom Government's pension arrangements. Benefits vary depending on the age of the individual and their contribution record. Currently anyone can make a claim, provided they have a minimum number of qualifying years of contributions.
Pensions in the United Kingdom, whereby United Kingdom tax payers have some of their wages deducted to save for retirement, can be categorised into three major divisions - state, occupational and personal pensions.
The Old Age Pensions Act 1908 is an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, passed in 1908. The act is one of the foundations of modern social welfare in both the present-day United Kingdom and the Irish Republic and forms part of the wider social welfare reforms of the Liberal government of 1906–1914.
Social welfare has long been an important part of New Zealand society and a significant political issue. It is concerned with the provision by the state of benefits and services. Together with fiscal welfare and occupational welfare, it makes up the social policy of New Zealand. Social welfare is mostly funded through general taxation. Since the 1980s welfare has been provided on the basis of need; the exception is universal superannuation.
The Third Labour Government of New Zealand was the government of New Zealand from 1972 to 1975. During its time in office, it carried out a wide range of reforms in areas such as overseas trade, farming, public works, energy generation, local government, health, the arts, sport and recreation, regional development, environmental protection, education, housing, and social welfare. Māori also benefited from revisions to the laws relating to land, together with a significant increase in a Māori and Island Affairs building programme. In addition, the government encouraged biculturalism and a sense of New Zealand identity. However, the government damaged relations between Pākehā and Pasifika New Zealanders by instituting the Dawn Raids on alleged overstayers from the Pacific Islands; the raids have been described as "the most blatantly racist attack on Pacific peoples by the New Zealand government in New Zealand’s history". The government lasted for one term before being defeated a year after the death of its popular leader, Norman Kirk.
Social security, in Australia, refers to a system of social welfare payments provided by Australian Government to eligible Australian citizens, permanent residents, and limited international visitors. These payments are almost always administered by Centrelink, a program of Services Australia. In Australia, most payments are means tested.
Social security is divided by the French government into five branches: illness; old age/retirement; family; work accident; and occupational disease. From an institutional point of view, French social security is made up of diverse organismes. The system is divided into three main Regimes: the General Regime, the Farm Regime, and the Self-employed Regime. In addition there are numerous special regimes dating from prior to the creation of the state system in the mid-to-late 1940s.
Defined benefit (DB) pension plan is a type of pension plan in which an employer/sponsor promises a specified pension payment, lump-sum, or combination thereof on retirement that depends on an employee's earnings history, tenure of service and age, rather than depending directly on individual investment returns. Traditionally, many governmental and public entities, as well as a large number of corporations, provide defined benefit plans, sometimes as a means of compensating workers in lieu of increased pay.
Pensions in Norway fall into three major divisions; State Pensions, Occupational Pensions and Individual or personal Pensions.
Social security or welfare in Finland is very comprehensive compared to what almost all other countries provide. In the late 1980s, Finland had one of the world's most advanced welfare systems, which guaranteed decent living conditions to all Finns. Created almost entirely during the first three decades after World War II, the social security system was an outgrowth of the traditional Nordic belief that the state is not inherently hostile to the well-being of its citizens and can intervene benevolently on their behalf. According to some social historians, the basis of this belief was a relatively benign history that had allowed the gradual emergence of a free and independent peasantry in the Nordic countries and had curtailed the dominance of the nobility and the subsequent formation of a powerful right wing. Finland's history was harsher than the histories of the other Nordic countries but didn't prevent the country from following their path of social development.
The National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme of the Government of India that provides financial assistance to the elderly, widows and persons with disabilities in the form of social pensions. The NSAP scheme only includes Below Poverty Line individuals as beneficiaries.
Bituah Leumi is Israel's national social security agency.
Califano v. Goldfarb, 430 U.S. 199 (1977), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that the different treatment of men and women mandated by 42 U.S.C. § 402(f)(1)(D) constituted invidious discrimination against female wage earners by affording them less protection for their surviving spouses than is provided to male employees, and therefore violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case was brought by a widower who was denied survivor benefits on the grounds that he had not been receiving at least one-half support from his wife when she died. Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the court, ruling unconstitutional the provision of the Social Security Act which set forth a gender-based distinction between widows and widowers, whereby Social Security Act survivors benefits were payable to a widower only if he was receiving at least half of his support from his late wife, while such benefits based on the earnings of a deceased husband were payable to his widow regardless of dependency. The Court found that this distinction deprived female wage earners of the same protection that a similarly situated male worker would have received, violating due process and equal protection.
In Ireland, there are two categories of social security, contributory, and non-contributory, as well as three main types of payments:
Mothers' pensions, also referred to as mothers' aid or widows' aid, were cash payments distributed to impoverished single mothers in the United States during the first three decades of the 20th century. Introduced during the Progressive Era, they were among the earliest components of the modern American welfare state and were the first public cash assistance programs targeted to single mothers.