The Department of Home Affairs of Son La province said that through the practical implementation of social pension allowance policies according to Article 21 of the Law on Social Insurance and Article 2 of Decree No. 176/2025/ND-CP, it is shown that currently people aged 75 and over are eligible for social pension benefits.
For groups of people from 70 years old to under 75 years old, they are only entitled to allowances when they belong to poor or near-poor households and meet the conditions according to regulations.
However, this locality realizes that in reality there is still a part of the elderly who do not have pensions, do not receive monthly social insurance benefits, have unstable incomes but are not classified as poor or near-poor households. This group is facing many difficulties, especially when incurring costs related to health care, medical examination and treatment, and long-term care needs.
In particular, elderly people living alone, without caregivers or living in areas with difficult socio-economic conditions often face many limitations in ensuring life when they are old.
From the above reality, the Son La Department of Home Affairs proposed that competent authorities study adjusting policies in the direction of gradually reducing the age of enjoying social pension benefits. In the immediate future, it is possible to consider expanding the beneficiaries of allowances for people aged 70 and over who do not have a monthly pension or social insurance allowance.
In addition to reducing the age, the locality also proposed to study and supplement criteria for assessing benefit conditions based on many factors such as personal income level, single living status, lack of caregivers, disability, illness, regular medical expense needs and living conditions in difficult areas, instead of just relying on the criteria of poor households and near-poor households as at present.
The Department of Home Affairs of Ha Tinh province also proposed building a roadmap to gradually reduce the retirement age for social pension benefits from 75 years old to 70 years old.
Before the local opinions, the Ministry of Home Affairs said that it had received and included this content in the draft revised Law on Social Insurance with two options to ask for opinions.
The first option is to maintain the current regulations.
The second option stipulates that the Government decides to gradually reduce the age of enjoying social pension benefits to 70 years old, in accordance with socio-economic development conditions and the ability to balance the state budget in each period. When necessary, the Government will submit to the National Assembly Standing Committee to decide on continuing to reduce the age of enjoying pension benefits to below 70 years old.
According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, the study to reduce the retirement age for social pension benefits aims to achieve the goal of expanding the coverage of social security policies, towards increasingly many older people having a stable source of income when they reach retirement age.
According to data from the social insurance agency, by the end of the first quarter of 2026, the number of people receiving monthly pensions and social insurance allowances reached more than 3.5 million people, an increase of 3.01% compared to 2024. It is expected that by the end of 2026, this number will reach more than 3.54 million people.
Currently, the whole country is implementing social pension benefits for about 2.5 million people, with a total state budget expenditure of nearly 7,000 billion VND.
