cover image: Perfectly adequate? - Revisiting pensions adequacy 20 years after the Pensions Commission

Perfectly adequate? - Revisiting pensions adequacy 20 years after the Pensions Commission

9 Oct 2024

Lower expected earnings growth – projected by the Office for Budget Responsibility to be 1.5 per cent in the medium term compared to the 2 per cent expectation of the Commission – has the effect of boosting the expected replacement rate by a further 1 percentage point. [...] One of the most significant social policy interventions of the past generation, auto-enrolment has radically increased the share of workers who are saving in a pension from 47 per cent in 2012 to 80 per cent in 2023.2 However, the default pension contribution rates reached the intended 8 per cent of gross income only in 2019, so it is fair to say that the scheme is still in its early stages and ha. [...] As a result, the combination of the State Pension and auto-enrolment savings is now projected to leave a median earner who saves from the age of 30 to 67 with a total gross earnings replacement rate of around 51 per cent, above the Commission’s minimum goal of 45 per cent, but a long way short of the updated target replacement rate of 72 per cent. [...] The new State Pension is likely to provide around 34 per cent of median ‘final earnings’ In the early 2000s, the combination of the basic State Pension (bSP) and the earnings- related state schemes such as the State Earnings-Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) and the State Second Pension (S2P) meant that a median earner with a full contribution record could expect to receive around 35 per cent of thei. [...] The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) estimates that from later in this decade some 80 to 90 per cent of retirees can expect to receive the full rate of the new State Pension.27 As a result, means-tested entitlements are set to become a very marginal part of the system, achieving the Pensions Commission’s vision of providing people with a stable base of state provision on which to plan their.

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Pages
80
Published in
United Kingdom

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