Independent Financial Advisers Glasgow News & Guides

Nearly eight in ten British people think making British workers work longer than their European counterparts to receive their state pension is unfair.

A YouGov poll - commissioned by Unite, the Public and Commercial Services union and the National Union of Teachers – reveals that a clear majority of those born before 1977 polled (62%) are uncomfortable with plans to raise the state pension age.

A strong majority of voters (62%) believe that any attempt to continue to raise the state pension age will hit the poorest pensioners hardest. But while 57% of people polled do have some understanding of plans to delay the state pension age, a significant number (38%) do not.

New statistics published by the Office for National Statistics reveal that that people are working longer than they used to. The average age at which people leave the labour market – a proxy for average age of retirement – rose from 63.8 years to 64.6 years for men and from 61.2 years to 62.3 years for women between 2004 and 2010.

This average summarises information about the ages at which people stop working, which differ for different people. For men, the peak ages for leaving the labour market are 64 to 66 years. For women, the peak ages are 59 to 62 years. Thus, retirement peaks around State Pension Age (SPA) for both sexes; but many people retire before SPA, and others work beyond SPA.

In 2010, there were 3.2 people of working age supporting each person of SPA and over in the UK. Without any changes to SPA, this ‘old age support ratio’ would drop to 2.0 by 2051, but under current legislation SPA has already begun to increase for women, and SPA for both sexes will rise to 68 by 2046. When these SPA changes are taken into account, the old age support ratio is projected to fall less, to 2.9 by 2051.

Women’s life expectancy at SPA will decline over this decade as their SPA rises. Between 2021 and 2051 life expectancy at SPA is expected to rise gradually for both sexes, because, following a change in the assumptions for future life expectancy in ONS's 2010-based population projections, life expectancy at the relevant ages is now projected to increase at a slightly faster rate than the increases in SPA contained in the Pensions Acts 2007 and 2011.

There are inequalities in life expectancy between social classes. The latest estimates for England and Wales show a gap of over three years in life expectancy at age 65 between the highest and lowest classes in the National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SEC). Within the UK, life expectancy at age 65 is highest in England and lowest in Scotland.

According to the International Longevity Centre-UK (ILC-UK), it is too often assumed that retirement is a one-off event, rather than a process. Yet there is increasing evidence that we are moving towards a process of ‘gradual retirement’, a concept associated with a wide range of opportunities that may be available to older workers, including downshifting within their current employment, moving into new forms of flexible and part-time work, and self-employment.

The Pensions Bill, which will provide help for firms to automatically enrol staff into workplace pensions from next year, has now received Royal Assent and become law.

Women who would have seen a two year increase to their state pension age will have their wait reduced to 18 months, Welfare Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has announced.

A new report by Age UK shows one in five women aged between 50 and 53 years old expect to receive their state pension by 60, yet in reality they will have to wait to 65 under current rules, and 66 if proposals being debated by MPs go ahead.