How does the UK state pension compare with other countries?
The BBC's Dharshini David examines how Britain's state pension stacks up against other countries — on generosity, spending and the gender gap.
British pensioners may be getting a worse deal than retirees in many other countries, but the full picture is more complicated than it looks, a BBC analysis by deputy economics editor Dharshini David reports.
The triple lock — which raises the state pension by whichever is highest of inflation, earnings growth or 2.5% — has cost the Treasury billions more than first expected. Pensioner poverty has still ticked up in recent years, largely because fast-rising housing costs are eating into gains.
OECD figures that project benefits for people born around the turn of the millennium show the UK's basic state pension is low by international standards. Even allowing for Britain's compulsory workplace pension auto-enrolment, after-tax retirement income would amount to only 54.2% of average UK earnings.
The overall bill is enormous: state pension spending is set to top £150bn a year, the single biggest budget line. Yet as a share of national income, Britain spends less than many peers — OECD projections put UK public pension spending at 7.9% of GDP in 2030, rising to 9.5% by 2060, against an OECD average of 9.3% rising to 10.3%.
The gender gap is another sore point. Women over 65 in the UK receive pension income roughly a third lower than men's, well above the OECD average gap of 22.8%, mostly because of lower pay and career breaks.
Andy Burnham intends to replace the triple lock in 2030 with a formula linked to the higher of inflation or 2.5%, dropping the earnings link. The article's advice to readers: the state pension is more generous than it used to be, but those who can should act now to save more.
Source: BBC News — Top Stories — TrendWire reports stories in its own words; facts should be confirmed against the original source.