When will all elderly people in Vietnam have monthly income?

Security gap

Talking about the challenges of the social security sector, Mr. Pham Truong Giang, Director of the Department of Social Insurance, Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, expressed concern as Vietnam is one of the countries with the fastest population aging rate in the world.

Currently, the country has about 14 million people past retirement age and is growing rapidly. With this growth rate, in the future our country may become a "super-aged" country like Japan, with 35-40% of the population being past working age.

This is a challenge for the social security system. Because with the above rate of population aging, the input of the social insurance system is the contribution of participants in working age, which is decreasing, while the output is the people after retirement age, which is increasing.

Rapid aging and many people without pensions pose a challenge to the social security sector (Illustration: Hai Long).

At a conference to provide comments on the draft revised Law on Social Insurance held in Ho Chi Minh City, Mr. André Gama, an expert from the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Vietnam, emphasized that there is a big gap in Vietnam's social security system.

That is a large proportion of the elderly do not have any source of income from the social security system. Currently, only retirees who have participated in social insurance for enough years receive pensions and the elderly over 80 years old receive monthly social benefits funded by the budget.

When they reach retirement age, a group of elderly people working in the informal sector or leaving the social insurance system do not receive pensions. If they do not meet the prescribed conditions, they will not receive social benefits. This is a group in the policy gap.

New pension scheme, funded from the budget

How to solve the above problem? According to Mr. Pham Truong Giang, the first priority when amending the Social Insurance Law is to supplement the social pension policy to complete the multi-layered social insurance system, filling the above social security gap.

This regime has achieved a very high consensus among the people as well as National Assembly Deputies, officially applied from July 1, 2025.

Mr. Pham Truong Giang said: "From July 1, 2025, about 1.2 million people aged 75 and over will naturally receive 500,000 VND per month. For people in poor and near-poor households, the age is even lower, only from 70 years old to receive benefits."

According to Mr. Giang, to implement the policy of reducing the age of support for the elderly from 80 to 75, the estimated amount of money to be paid each year is about 4,000-5,000 billion VND.

"This money comes entirely from the state budget. The Government's consistent idea when drafting the 2024 Social Insurance Law is to increase the benefits for employees but not the contribution rate. So where does the money come from? Increase the benefits through increasing the state's responsibility, money from the state budget," said Mr. Giang.

The goal is that every elderly person has an income.

Notably, the 2024 Social Insurance Law stipulates: "The National Assembly Standing Committee decides to gradually reduce the age of receiving social pension benefits based on the Government's proposal in accordance with socio-economic development conditions and the capacity of the state budget in each period."

Thus, the age of receiving social pension benefits is not fixed at 70 or 75, but will continue to decrease in the future. However, that is a matter of the distant future, when the country develops. What about in the near future, those who are past working age but not old enough to receive social pension benefits?

Mr. Pham Truong Giang shared: "When building this policy, we still had concerns. We have taken care of people over 70 years old, so what about people over 60 but not yet 70? Next, we propose a second policy, a policy linking social insurance levels."

Specifically, the 2024 Social Insurance Law adds a policy to cover this group, which is "the regime for employees who are not eligible for pension and are not old enough to receive social retirement benefits" as stipulated in Article 23.

Mr. Pham Truong Giang said that with this new policy, employees only need to have 5 years of social insurance contributions to be able to pay monthly social insurance for 10 years. At that time, the age for them to receive monthly social insurance benefits will be reduced from 75 to 65. If employees have 7-8 years of social insurance contributions, they can receive benefits as soon as they reach retirement age.

According to Mr. Giang, the ultimate goal of the above policy is to encourage workers not to withdraw their social insurance at one time.

"If you only pay social insurance for a few years, you will receive a few tens of millions of dong at once. Now with this policy, retired workers have more options to receive monthly benefits, have monthly money and a health insurance card. The amount of 500,000 dong per month may be small but stable, especially with an additional health insurance card paid by the budget. A health insurance card is extremely important for the elderly," said Mr. Giang.

In particular, with the two new regimes added to the Social Insurance Law in 2024, Vietnam's social insurance system will be multi-layered, filling the existing social security gap with the goal of ensuring that all elderly people have a monthly income.

The lowest level is workers who do not have the conditions to participate in social insurance, but when they reach retirement age, they will also receive social pension benefits.

The higher level is for workers who participate in social insurance but do not have enough years to receive a pension, they also receive a monthly social insurance benefit with the lowest level equal to the social pension benefit.

The highest level is for workers who have participated in social insurance for enough years, they will receive a pension. For those with better conditions, they can participate in additional pension to receive a higher pension.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/an-sinh/khi-nao-moi-nguoi-cao-tuoi-o-viet-nam-deu-co-thu-nhap-hang-thang-20241002114947572.htm