Article published by Mr. José Alberto León Alonso in the September 2017 issue of La Gaveta Económica.
One of the reforms that is never talked about but is increasingly necessary is that of widow's pensions. The debate on the need to undertake a profound and comprehensive reform of survival benefits – orphanhood and widowhood – has been on hold for decades due to the foreseeable political wear and conflict involved in facing a measure of this caliber. There are proposals to stop financing them with social contributions and start paying them with general taxes, reducing the pension deficit substantially. However, these proposals fall halfway to the ideal.
It is true that this type of assistance benefits must be paid for with taxes and not contributions, but first we must ask whether the widow's pension makes sense in the 21st century as it is formulated. In Spain, the widow's pension is a life annuity to which all surviving spouses are entitled if the deceased was registered with Social Security or was a beneficiary of a pension from the system. In August 2017 there are 2.4 million recipients of this benefit. As a particularity, just under a hundred people between 20 and 24 years old receive it, since there is no age limit to receive it. For these few young beneficiaries of the widow's pension, the death of their spouse guarantees them receiving an accumulated amount of more than half a million euros throughout their lives, compatible with any other public or private perception. It's not like they won the lottery, but it seems like it.
The right to receive this payment has been extended to more and more groups with little restriction since its implementation in the 1960s. In principle this right was limited to widows over 45 years of age, or with permanent disability, or with dependent children. Of course, then only husbands contributed, so when they died the wife retained a pension. In the eighties, men achieved equal rights, and since then the rest of the restrictions due to age, disability or dependent children have been eliminated. Although current proposals focus on changing the financing model, the underlying problem is that the massive incorporation of women into the labor market in recent decades forces us to rethink this figure to adapt it to new times. It makes no sense to grant a lifetime pension to a young widower who is able and old enough to earn his own living. These benefits should gradually become welfare benefits, linking the pension to low income, and temporary for young people, turning it into a kind of transition insurance towards their new situation, as is happening throughout Europe.
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