Why women are retiring with 35% less in their KiwiSaver than men on average | Stuff.co.nz

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Well, the average Kiwi man reaching retirement age has approximately $91,000 in their KiwiSaver account. For the average woman, that number sits at only 68,000 despite the fact that women live longer than men. This growing divide has emerged after 19 years of the scheme being in place. So, are we making enough progress to ensure a healthier retirement for everyone? And what can be done to ensure better equity in the system? Well, joining me now to crunch the latest numbers from the Retirement Commission is Stuff Money editor Damian Venuto. Looking at the latest KiwiSaver numbers, are we making good progress or are we still saving too slowly?

[00:00:39]Look, the KiwiSaver scheme is still quite young in the grand scheme of things. It's not even 20 years old. But, if you look at the progress we are making, there's some really good numbers in there. So, if you look at New Zealanders who are earning over $50,000 per annum, that's roughly the minimum wage, 90% of those people are contributing to the scheme. And the promising thing is that that contribution is consistent. So, what we're also seeing is that the number of accounts with less than $10,000 is decreasing over time. And then the number of accounts with more than $80,000 has doubled in the last 5 years.

[00:01:14]So, that's all significant and it's showing really good signs of progress.

[00:01:17]Interesting, but the numbers, I suppose, aren't all rosy. Can you tell us more about the gender gap between men and women? So, this is one of the big issues that I identified in when looking at the numbers. And it's something that the Retirement Commission also identified as a key issue that needs to be addressed.

[00:01:33]So, from quite a young age, about 18 to 25, we see the emergence of an early gender gap in terms of how much um men and women have accumulated in their savings. That gap grows significantly.

[00:01:46]And by the time your average New Zealand man and woman reach their mid mid to late 50s, it's 36%.

[00:01:54]Now, that's worrying because men tend to live shorter lives than women and ironically women require more to to to they they they need to fund a longer retirement essentially. It It is so interesting. How does that happen? Are women just not contributing as much because of differences in pay or or is there something bigger that's going on here?

[00:02:13]>> I asked that exact question to the policy lead at the retirement commission and she told me no. Women and men are contributing roughly the same amounts throughout the course of their lives.

[00:02:22]These differences are they don't come down to KiwiSaver. They come down to the structural issues that kind of inform the workplace across New Zealand. So what we what we see is that women tend to work lower paying jobs. They also tend to take longer breaks from the workforce to do things like care for children. So what we're seeing is the emergence of a penalty that you have to pay if you want to have children, if you want to take some time off to be with your children. And that's concerning when you look at the fact that our birth rate is also declining. So there are a lot of questions that are up in the air with how the system is working right now. Yeah, absolutely. As a working mother I totally understand what you're talking about. Are there any suggestions that help to narrow this gap? So there are a lot of ideas out there at the moment. Fraser Whineray, the former chief executive of Mercury Energy, has come out and said that he'd like to see employer contributions continue when someone takes parental leave. But here's the catch, he doesn't want the employer to cover them. He wants the government to cover those contributions. That would cost around 40 to 50 million dollars. So you're looking at quite a big outlay of money that the government would have to put forward. And this is the problem with KiwiSaver. The The The Retirement Commission says that all these ideas are wonderful, but what what we really need is a solid road map over the next 10 years that identifies what KiwiSaver should look like, who it should support, and how that needs to come into effect.

[00:03:39]And that needs to be cross-partisan. It can't be contingent on the whims and fancies of the government of the day.

[00:03:44]Yeah, it absolutely needs that political consensus. So it is fascinating. Thank you so much for looking into all of those numbers, Damian Venuto.