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Oral Answer by Mrs Josephine Teo Second Minister for Manpower to Parliamentary Question on Retirement Adequacy of Women

Employment practices

NOTICE PAPER NO. 984 OF 2017 FOR THE SITTING ON 8 JANUARY 2018

QUESTION NO. 1666 FOR ORAL ANSWER

MP: ASSOC PROF DANIEL GOH PEI SIONG

To ask the Minister for Manpower how many couples aged 65 years and above are currently supported by only one CPF LIFE payout and how many of the spouses not receiving such payouts are women.

Answer

  1. First let me clarify that the CPF LIFE scheme is only mandatory for cohorts who turned 55 from 2013 or, in other words, those cohorts turning 65 from 2023. Older cohorts can opt in to CPF LIFE on a voluntary basis, but most of them are still under the Retirement Sum Scheme (RSS) which does not provide lifelong payouts.

  2. As CPF accounts are maintained and managed as individual accounts, we do not have data on CPF accounts by households and couples. For those aged 65 in 2018, the average CPF balance when they reached their Payout Eligibility Age of 64 in 2017 was $118,000 for males, and $91,500 for females. This could reflect social norms in the past where many women were full-time caregivers and either did not work, or worked irregularly, and hence would have less CPF.