What Pension Should the State Provide?

Pensioner Income Inequality

“…In both these decades, incomes at the tenth percentile rose more quickly than those at the median, which in turn rose faster than those at the ninetieth percentile. Given that previous studies (Dilnot and Johnson (1992), for example) postulated that the rise in inequality over the 1980s was largely associated with an increase in the importance and levels of private pensions for a group of pensioners, and given that one might have expected this trend to have been going on prior to the 1980s, this pattern is both somewhat surprising and potentially interesting. While inequality was far higher in 1990 than in 1980, inequality 'See Goodman and Webb (1994) and Department of Social Security (1995a) for further evidence of this trend.…”

“…Recent studies (Dilnot and Johnson, 1992;Hancock and Weir, 1994) have shown growing income levels and growing inequality through the 1980s in Britain among pensioners, just as inequality has grown among the rest of the population. Recent studies (Dilnot and Johnson, 1992;Hancock and Weir, 1994) have shown growing income levels and growing inequality through the 1980s in Britain among pensioners, just as inequality has grown among the rest of the population.…”

“…There is, of course, much more one could say about the current distribution of incomes among pensioners. Further details using the latest data are available in Department of Social Security (1995b); other analyses are described in Dilnot and Johnson (1992) and in Dilnot, Disney, Johnson and Whitehouse (1994). Rather than repeating these, we now go on to look in more detail at the trends in incomes and in the distribution and composition of those incomes.…”

“…Like the overall distribution of incomes, the distribution of pensioners' incomes changes over time. Recent studies (Dilnot and Johnson, 1992;Hancock and Weir, 1994) have shown growing income levels and growing inequality through the 1980s in Britain among pensioners, just as inequality has grown among the rest of the population. This study looks at the changes over a longer period of time by using FES data from 1961 onwards.…”

The Reform of Pensions in the UK

“…Another reason was its understanding of the consequences of ageing and a desire not to see tax rates high, even in the future. P Also important was an understanding that pensioners were no longer an homogeneously poor group Johnson, 1992, Johnson andStears, 1995), so that increasing levels of spending on a universal basic pension began to appear anachronistic.…”