State pension age 'could rise above life expectancy in poorer areas'

Keeping a generous triple-lock on the state pension will mean many people in poorer areas die before they receive any payouts, says a new report.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), which carried out the study for the parliamentary pensions committee, the retirement age will have to rise to 70.5 by 2060 in order to keep pension spending at six per cent of GDP and maintain the triple-lock increases.

Average male life expectancy is currently below that level in many poorer parts of Britain, says the BBC, including 162 council areas in Scotland.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

It adds that the lowest male life expectancy "was 62.5 years in the Parkhead West and Barrowfield area of Glasgow. In that area, female life expectancy was 70.1 years".

Life expectancy is below 70.5 in 26 areas of England, "including Blackpool, Manchester, Teesside, Leicester, east London and the Wirral", continues the BBC: "The lowest male expectancy in England was 67.5 years in the centre of Blackpool… By contrast, male life expectancy in the area of Westminster, which includes Mayfair and Covent Garden, was 92.9 years."

Announcing the findings, the parliamentary pensions committee renewed its call for the triple-lock to be discontinued at the end of the current parliamentary cycle in 2020.

Chairman Frank Field MP said the state pension will provide a "decent minimum income" by then and the triple-lock "will have done its job".

All three main parties during the general election campaign promised to keep the pledge, which guarantees the state pension will rise by the greater of average earnings, inflation and 2.5 per cent.

In practice, this has meant the state pension has risen at 2.5 per cent a year and is up £1,100 since 2010, despite inflation being near zero and the government freezing most working-age benefits.