Self-employed people, like employees, currently have to pay National Insurance contributions towards a basic state pension but they cannot contribute to SERPS. The second pension choice for them is a personal pension or, since April 2001, a stakeholder pension, although many self-employed people make provision for their retirement through other savings and investments.

Among self-employed people working full time, as with employees, men were more likely than women to have personal pension arrangements. In 2001:

• 54% of self-employed men and 37% of self-employed women working full time were currently in a personal pension scheme;
• among self-employed people working full time, one third (32%) of men had never had a personal pension compared with a half (50%) of women;
• about a quarter of the self-employed who worked part time were currently members of a personal pension scheme (24% of men and 29% of women);
• among self-employed people with a current personal pension, just 4% had a stakeholder pension in 2001 (table not shown).

Although the GHS provides trend data since 1991 on the personal pension arrangements among self-employed people, Table 6.13 shows data only for men working full time since the sample sizes for self-employed men working part time and for self-employed women are too small to give reliable estimates.

• The take up of personal pensions among self-employed men remained fairly stable between 1991 and 1998, at just under two thirds, but has since decreased from 64% in 1998 to 54% in 2001.

The likelihood of having a personal pension increased with the length of time spent in self-employment. Because of small sample numbers, the results are based on combined data for the most recent three years of the GHS.

• Men working full time who had been self-employed for five years or more were twice as likely to have a current personal pension as were those who had been self-employed for less than two years (66% compared with 30%).
• The pattern was similar for women. For example, for women working part time the comparable proportions were 35% and 10%.