State pensions 'should double'
Updated on 01 January 2009
Britons think the state pension would have to double in order to provide people with a comfortable standard of living during retirement, research showed.
The average person thinks they would need £832 a month, excluding mortgage or rent, in order to have comfortable retirement, nearly double the £439 a single pensioner currently receives from the basic state pension, according to life insurer Friends Provident.
But despite the fact that 75% of people think the state pension does not provide an adequate retirement income, 57% still plan to rely on it solely or partly to fund their retirement.
A third of people think they will struggle to make ends meet during retirement, but they are still reluctant to pay more money into a pension now.
Twice as many people would rather cut back on their living costs once they have stopped working than would increase their pension contributions now, at 19% compared with 10%.
People are also more likely to consider delaying their retirement for five years at 17% or moving to a smaller property at 15% than they are to boost their pension contributions.
The research was carried out to mark the 100 anniversary of the first state pension being paid.
The first state pension was five shillings a week, or £19.30 in today's money, compared with £90.70 a week for a single pensioner now. But despite this only 40% of people think retired people receiving the state pension are better off now than they were in 1909.
People also had to wait until they were 70 to claim their state pension in 1909, although the average life expectancy at the time was only 52. Today, men receive their state pension at the age of 65, with women receiving it when they are 60, although this is gradually being increased, and both sexes can expect to live until they are 77 on average.
Only one in every 200 people lived to be 100 when the state pension was first introduced, compared with one in four now. Unsurprisingly, the increase in life expectancy has led to more people claiming the state pension, at 12 million today, compared with 500,000 in 1909.
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