Male life expectancy at birth in UK cities ranges from 70.8 years in Glasgow City to 83.7 years in Kensington and Chelsea. The results show that Conservative plans to raise the pensionable age to 66 from 2016 will have a different impact on retirement plans in different parts of the country.
The table below taken from the Office for National Statistics shows life expectancy at birth for seven local authorities (the highest, lowest, and five in between). Left Foot Forward has calculated the percentage of projected retirement that will be lost by raising the retirement age from 65 to 66.
In the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the average worker will lose 5.3 per cent of their retired life. This compares to 17.4 per cent in Glasgow City. In David Cameron’s constituency of Witney, in West Oxfordshire, people will lose 6.8 per cent of their retired life.
It should be noted that the figures are indicative. Those aged 65 are likely to live beyond their life expectancy at birth.
The Government originally planned to raise the retirement age in 2026. The Conservative plans are reported to save £13 billion per year but no savings will be realised in this parliament or the next. Speaking on BBC News this morning, Kevin Maguire of the Mirror described the move as “macho politics.”
UPDATE 12.19
The basic state pension is £95.25 for an individual. This means that the average male will lose £4,953 from raising the retirement age by one year to 66.
For those already aged 65 the spread of retirement lost is smaller. Using ONS figures, life expectancy at 65 in Glasgow is 78.8 and in Kensington & Chelsea is 87.7 (a spread of 8.9 years compared to 12.9 years at birth). Raising the age to 66 therefore means that someone who is 65 today will lose 7.2% of their retirement in Glasgow City but just 4.4% in Kensington & Chelsea.
UPDATE 16.30 (Oct 7th)
DWP are reporting that “Initial estimates suggest that raising the State Pension Age only for men to 66 in 2016 would only save £1.8bn in pension payments and £0.7bn in taxes and NICs, i.e. a total saving of approximately £2.5bn. (This doesn’t take account of Pension Credit which would reduce the savings further).”
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34 Responses to “Cameron’s plans cut retirement by 17% in Glasgow”
Evidence Matters
Agree – fine discussion in comments. rt @mattwardman Who needs Channel 4: Blogs get factchecked in the comments. http://bit.ly/PaEj5
Andrew Fish
Isn’t this all spin given that Labour were already planning to hike up the pension age and that all the Conservatives are doing is bringing it forward? Or did I miss some major announcement that was going to improve life expectancy in Glasgow before it kicked in?
Stuart Yates
Re Glasgow’s short life expectancy: So that’s what you get after fifty or so years of Labour governing the city.
Fiona Cullinan
One for sub-editors. RT @mattwardman Who needs Channel 4: Blogs get factchecked in the comments. http://bit.ly/PaEj5
Roger
Stuart’s childish sneer hardly justifies more than the traditional two-word reply.
Charlie makes a more substantial point and having Scottish working class roots myself its difficult to disagree that Glaswegians lost years of LE are to some degree self-inflicted.
But to quote a recent post by US blogger Ezra Klein:
This reminds me of Charles Karelis’s “The Persistence of Poverty.” The basic argument is that the wealthy misunderstand the mental state of the poor, which leads them to make conceptual errors when creating policies to address poverty, or, in this case, obesity. Think of a bee sting, he advises. If you have a single bee sting, you’ll go buy some salve to take away the pain. Now imagine three bee stings, a sprained ankle, a burn, a cut, a crick in your neck, a sore throat, and arthritis. Does the bee sting matter anymore?
Karelis argues that this is more the situation of someone in poverty. Obesity is bad, but it may be just one of many bad things. Overdue bills. A horrible part-time job. Endless commuting time on the bus. A mother with diabetes. A child running with the wrong crowd. A leaking roof. In that scenario, slowly reversing your weight gain might be a good idea, but it hardly makes a dent in the overall crumminess of the conditions. It won’t replace pain with pleasure. So you do things that are surer to replace pain with pleasure, like have a delicious, filling, satisfying, salty, fatty meal. That may make your overall situation more unpleasant, but then, making that situation pleasant didn’t seem like an option in the first place.
This, he would say, is fundamentally different than the situation of someone who is fundamentally happy with his life but thinks he should lose 30 pounds. For that person, those 30 pounds are the main thing standing between him and perceived happiness. It’s one bee sting instead of a dozen ailments.
[END QUOTE]
In any case long years of retirement living on a state pension in a Govan tower block is probably nowhere near as enticing a prospect for Rab and Mary as selling up ones place in Fulham and dividing ones time between a cottage in Devon and a Villa in Umbria is for Henry and Caroline.
Given this I am not at all sure that Rab’s and Mary’s life choices are that less rational.