money matters
Paul Lewis
PENSION POVERTY / MONEY NEWS
While many believe the over-65s are living a retirement of luxury, in reality 1 in 6 of them are in poverty. Don’t suffer in silence, our columnist urges. You can – and you must – help yourself
illustration JOSIE PORTILLO
Many people think the over-65s are a blessed generation. They own their own home, they have gold-plated pensions from work, and a state pension that rises each April with earnings or prices and can never be increased by less than 2.5% a year. These are financial advantages that younger people can only dream of. Even the name for their generation – ‘boomers’, from the baby boom that followed the end of the Second World War when couples got together after years of privation – is now pejorative.
Researchers on behalf of charity Independent Age surveyed 2,000 adults in April and found that half the people they asked underestimated the extent of pensioner poverty – 8% thought only 1 in 50 were in poverty and a further fifth thought 1 in 20. In fact it is around 1 in 6.