Over-75s miss out on Baby Boomer wealth
OLDER pensioners are thousands of pounds a year poorer on average than younger adults and deserve more help, a charity warns.
It said the “keep calm and carry on” generation that lived through the Second World War is at risk of being “forgotten and left to suffer in silence” in a society that assumes all pensioners are equally well off.
The older people’s charity Independent Age said it is wrong to suggest that all pensioners could afford to have universal benefits such as free TV licences meanstested or removed because they had been protected from the cuts imposed on younger people.
Its report, published today, compares the finances of pensioners aged 75 and over with younger “Baby Boomer” pensioners and working-age adults.
After housing costs, which are higher for younger people, were factored out the average income of older pensioners was £52 a week lower – making them £2,700 a year poorer than the average worker and the under-75s.
Over a third of the UK’s 11.8 million pensioners are aged 75 or over.
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Half are single and more than half have a disability or live with someone who does. A fifth, about 950,000, live in poverty, with women, single people and those in rented accommodation at greatest risk.
The report said older pensioners are less likely to have gained from raised earnings and the growth of occupational pensions in the 1950s and ’60s, leaving 750,000 reliant on the State pension and benefits.
Independent Age chief executive Janet Morrison said: “These findings show how misleading it is to treat all 11.8 million pensioners in this country as one group.
“The Silent Generation of older pensioners, renters and single women have missed out on many of the gains of recent years. The older people we spoke to talked about ‘keeping a brave face... and not wanting to ask for help’.”
The charity is calling for more awareness of Pension Credit which about 750,000 pensioners are entitled to but it is not being claimed.