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What protection does your Child Benefit give you?

Your State Pension is based on the number of 'qualifying years' you build up during your working life. A qualifying year is one when you earn enough to pay National Insurance contributions. So if you're not working, or not earning enough to pay National Insurance contributions, your pension could suffer.

For each week that you get Child Benefit you could qualify for:

• weekly National Insurance credits to protect your future entitlement to basic State Pension
• weekly Earnings Factor credits to protect your future entitlement to the State Second Pension.

You can combine the weekly credits with National Insurance contributions and credits in order to build up a year of entitlement to the basic State Pension.

Your credits and contributions have to be made in the same tax year for you to combine them in this way.

Who qualifies for the credits?

You can get the credits if you get Child Benefit for a child under 12. This will continue until your youngest child reaches the age of 12.

Periods of Child Benefit that count towards the credits

You can qualify for the credits for any period during which you receive Child Benefit.

If you have less than a full tax year’s credits, the credits that you have can be combined with other credits and National Insurance contributions to make up a qualifying year.

A tax year runs from 6 April to the following 5 April.

If you were getting Child Benefit before 6 April 2023

If you were getting Child Benefit for a child under 16 before 6 April 2010, you automatically qualified for a scheme called Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) which helped to protect your basic State Pension. This has now been replaced by the weekly National Insurance credits for parents and carers and Earnings Factor credit.

You won’t lose out on any protection you have already built up. If you reach State Pension age on or after 6 April 2010, any complete tax years of HRP (up to a maximum of 22 years) you have had will have been converted into full years of credits that count towards your basic State Pension.

If you received Child Benefit for a child under 6, you automatically built up entitlement to an additional pension through State Second Pension.

Further information

For further information you can phone the Pension Service Helpline on 0845 606 0265 or textphone on 0845 606 0285.

You can also phone the National Insurance Helpline on 0845 302 1479 between 8.00 am and 5.00 pm.

More useful links

• How to claim Child Benefit

• National Insurance credits Opens new window

• Read more about getting credits towards your State Pension (pensions and retirement planning section)

• Find out more about understanding the basic State Pension (pensions and retirement planning section)

• Find out more about the additional State Pension (pensions and retirement planning section)

Useful contacts

• Money, tax and benefits contacts