SASKATOON (Staff) – A survey of British Columbia farm women shows they are not financially prepared to retire.
The questionnaire sent out in the fall by the B.C. Farm Women’s Network had responses from about 220 women, said project co-ordinator Elizabeth Mann.
While 43 percent of the women indicated they had some income from off-farm jobs, only 15 percent were able to make the maximum contributions throughout the year to the Canada Pension Plan. Most of their contributions came from their jobs, not from farm income.
Without the federal CPP or old age security and guaranteed income supplement “many farm and rural women will face impoverishment in their senior years,” said a news release from the network.
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“They conclude that their only options would be to sell the farm, or to have extensive years of off-farm employment.”
Selling the farm means an end to the traditional family practice of passing the farm to the children.
Mann said survey results and the women’s suggestions for reforming the pension system were sent to all agriculture ministers, the federal ministers in charge of women and pensions and all provincial representatives of the Canadian Farm Women’s Network. In an interview, Mann said she thought the results would be the same for farm women in other parts of the country.
“Why would it be any different?”
While younger women may be able to change their individual situations by making a career off the farm, “most farm people want to work part time.”
Women in the survey had three major suggestions for the CCP to help farm women who have been dependent on their spouse’s ability to build an adequate retirement package:
- Allow the at-home spouse to make contributions to the CPP or permit a catch-up period.
- Allow farmers to make contributions when they have a high gross income and low net income, or be given a catch-up period.
- Allow farmers to make maximum contributions, as do wage earners.
Mann said the pension rules are a “bit unfair” since they do not deal with the up and down nature of farm income but are based on regular salaried income. Farmers cannot pay more in their good years to make up for their ineligibility in bad years.
Mann said the pension question is more crucial now because people are living 20 or 30 years after retirement.
While farmers have more freedom in contributing to Registered Retirement Savings Plans, the income is taxed when taken out, unlike the CPP. Although 61 percent of women answering the survey said they had RRSPs, mutual funds or other assets, “because of having larger size families than the urban population and lower incomes, these savings were minimal.”
