Pension triple lock and free travel: UK ‘spends £13k more on retirees than kids’
Pension triple lock and free travel: UK ‘spends £13k more on retirees than kids’
Posted by theipaper
Pension triple lock and free travel: UK ‘spends £13k more on retirees than kids’
Pension triple lock and free travel: UK ‘spends £13k more on retirees than kids’
Posted by theipaper
29 comments
The gap in the amount the Government spends on pensioners compared to children has widened by 170 per cent in the past two decades, according to report by a think tank.
The difference has increased from £4,673 to £12,605, figures produced by the Intergenerational Foundation (IF) show.
It added government spending per pensioner increased by 55 per cent in real-terms since the early 2000s, compared with a rise of just 20 per cent for children.
Spending per pensioner now stands at £30,591, compared with £17,986 for children, the analysis says.
According to IF, which campaigns on behalf of younger people, part of the widening gap is due to spending on pensions increasing significantly above the rate of inflation since 2011 – when the [triple lock](https://inews.co.uk/topic/state-pension-triple-lock?srsltid=AfmBOorSrk4XJH8BTh5o7zGfHMNlSicAU0eKMX3tbqVHJpuu2fTKvzef&ico=in-line_link) was introduced for the state pension.
This lock ensures that the [state pension](https://inews.co.uk/topic/state-pension?srsltid=AfmBOooG1WwEhlAPXdJEnU_UIhy8Ipjdcm3ZvF0rc8o80PxPTdDIvBn_&ico=in-line_link) rises by the highest of inflation, earnings growth or 2.5 per cent every year.
Previous analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has suggested this means the Government is spending £11bn more per year on the benefit compared to if the state pension rose in line with prices or earnings instead.
At the same time, education spending has comparably stagnated since 2010. According to IF analysis in its report [*A Growing Divide*](https://www.if.org.uk/research-posts/a-growing-divide-two-decades-of-intergenerational-unfairness), although it rose between 2004 and 2010, it declined for much of the 2010s per child, in real terms and only recovered slightly between 2017 and 2024.
Kids can’t vote.
look to say the old do not need help would be wrong but the lack of investment in the future is disgusting
These people had a lifetime to take personal responsibility for their finances in old age, children by definition have not.
I don’t like the language of scarcity around spending, and it is a false dichotomy to say we can’t have the triple lock and child benefits.
But if this government wants to keep playing the neoliberal game and pretend we have to pick, I’m going with the kids.
Pensioners tend not to have parents who are responsible for them
IFS, another conservative bean counting think tank.
Giving back money that they contributed seems fair. I wonder how much UK spends more on boat migrants than kids, would the left be mad about that?
For all those saying they’ve paid for it… they haven’t.
There is a massive black hole.
And no it wasn’t Labour who “sold the gold” it is a cacophony of screw ups and bad management (mostly conservative management and lack of growth) and the data is clear but present skewed frequently by all parties.
The aging population makes it worse. We need immigration, triple lock is killing us.
The compulsory workplace pensions bought some time (thanks Labour) but were screwed.
Kids don’t get ill anywhere near as much & a kid is never the sole person in charge of paying bills. They also typically have parents around to provide at least a minimum level of round the clock care whereas not every pensioner does. Providing state care is also cheaper (one teacher can look after 20-30 kids at a time but one carer would struggle to look after 20-30 pensioners).
Also free public transport for pensioners is something you will never convince me is a bad thing.
Devide and conquer
This really annoys me, my 80’s year old parents are way richer than me, they have a combined income that probably either not far off mine or greater than mine, go on multiple holiday a year, we really haven’t looked after are future kids.
I get there are old people out there that need this, and for those that struggle especially in there 80’s 90’s they need this help.
We really need to close the gap between the wealthy and not
As a benficiary of the ‘triple lock’, it’s a kind of a nonsense, to live anything like a reasonable life you still need a private or employer’s pension, the state pension alone is not enough.
Personally, I’m in two minds about the free travel, it’s nice (in London it starts at 60), but I feel a 50% off fare would be fairer (excuse the pun).
It’s a big mistake not to spend more money on the future.
The richest demographic in the UK is laughing all the way to the bank. Meanwhile working people can’t save for house deposits.
“Free Travel” – My kids get free travel and I believe that applies until they are 22. This is Scotland, does this not apply in England?
Unlike the pensioners system for free travel it doesn’t allow you to travel free outside your council area.
It astounds me this isn’t being discussed – it needs to be front and centre on prime time BBC 1
I mean, are we heading for an Italian-style demographic crisis?
Italy’s economy is struggling in part because of a rapidly ageing and shrinking population. Low birth rates and high pension costs making the system unsustainable — and we might be heading down the same path.
Our birth rate is well below replacement (1.49), and population growth is almost entirely from immigration.
The old-age dependency ratio is rising, meaning more retirees supported by fewer workers.
Policies overwhelmingly favour over-60s — the triple lock, tax-free pension perks, and protected housing wealth — may be popular, but they’re shifting more of the economic burden onto our younger generations.
Working-age Brits face high housing costs, stagnant wages, and increased tax pressure.
I think we still have time to do something about this, but if we don’t address intergenerational imbalance, the long-term economic strain will only deepen. The greed of my generation (60+) over the younger generation is saddening.
Don’t forget how much us oldpeople have paid in national insurance and all kinds of taxes, including TAX ON PENSIONS AND SAVINGS, because we thought ahead and provided for our future.
I seriously wonder just how much of this Reddit griping about the elderly would see this differently when they are old and have worked their whole lives for a nice retirement.
Also, alot of this wealth is transitioned down through the generations as grandparents dote and then also pass away.
Seriously just reads as the age old generational friction that has existed since the dawn of time.
There seems to be a antagonism against many groups at this time whether they be pensioners, children, millennial, rich, poor, benifit users, black, white etc etc. Perhaps if we put more effort in understanding why this is occurring we could be in a better place rather than arguing with each other whilst the political class quietly smile.
I get that old people are vulnerable and usually can’t rely on anyone like children can rely on their parents; but this seems such an obvious societal flaw. Pensioners have had 40/50 years to get their finances in order, during the easiest, most prosperous economic decades in history, and yet successive governments are prioritising pensioners over children, who are quite notably, not a drain on the NHS (typically) and who are our literal future.
Meanwhile the middle class who are bringing up kids gets taxed more than anyone else.
People are living longer and the majority can’t work past the age of normal retirement.
We fix this by ensuring we save enough for retirement and not expecting the next generation to foot the bill.
My grandfather retired at 57 and lived to 100. He acknowledged that he pulled out from the system far more than he put in over his lifetime. The frequency of which has only been increasing.
The money has to come from somewhere to fund this…
Intergenerational theft on an unprecedented scale. Boomers are parasites
And that triple lock won’t exist for them.
The triple lock is a ponzi scheme.
The uk won’t default because it can print its own money but I expect to see hyperinflation in our lifetime, to pay off the debt or perhaps a panic in the gilt market.
Government spending should prioritise returns to the taxpayer; infrastructure, housebuilding, healthcare focusing on returning the most productive to work and STEM education for the most-able students.
I would overhaul welfare – realistically most recipients are underemployed. I would put them to work building homes and infrastructure instead, and able-bodied welfare recipients would be put on a duty rota to care for those unable to work. They would be housed in dormitories, at least until more houses can be built, rather than pay through the nose for emergency housing.
Avoiding the herding of massive generations of the population into apparent cohesive groups.. this really is about the social contract between the state and it’s population.
The state pension was never about paying your amount in and then withdrawing it when you retire. It’s about you paying for the pensions of the current retirees on the understanding that someone will pay for yours when you get there. That’s still the contract that exists today with the working age paying for todays retirees and hopefully when I get there, someone will be paying for mine.
The comparison for kids is relatively meaningless becuase kids for the most part are the responsibility of parents rather than the state.
If we go ahead and break the social contract then I’m not sure where we end up. Very short-term thinking.
This entire article seems to be designed to get people angry at pensioners, which it seems to be achieving in this thread.
It says the gap in the amount the Government spends on pensioners compared to children is £12,605. And spending per pensioner now stands at £30,591.
The primary cause of this gap, as presented in the article, is the state pension and in particular the triple lock, which apparently allows pensioners to live like kings while eating swans and spitting on the poor all day; but the stated difference in spending is £12,605 per year while the full state pension is only £11,973 per year. Even adding a three hundred quid winter fuel payment doesn’t reach the level of the supposed gap, let alone add up to the £30,591 claimed spending per pensioner.
The only other government spending on pensioners brought up in the article is free travel, perhaps suggesting that pensioners are using eighteen grand of free travel on average. Substantially more than the full state pension itself.
Clearly the state pension is not the cause of the £30,591 spending, unless the administration of the pension is grossly inefficient. People are being prompted to blame another section of the population for their own financial difficulties (in true Marxist style), and being prompted to destroy the state pension which they may regret some day when they themselves get older; and at under twelve thousand pounds it is still only a very basic income.
This is one thing that really bothers me. Some pensioner with with a bus pass, free tv licence, cold weather heating allowances and excempt from bedroom tax gets all this support while young people and young families struggle on.
Im working overtime on weekends to subsidise my retired neighbours who simply don’t want to downsize.
What a load of bash the elderly bile is coming out here, the government cannot get rid the triple lock as too many pensioners have no other source of income. Poverty would go of the scale, and hospitals would overflow, significantly more than are already. it wont be a great look for whoever is PM..the state pension is miserly anyway, compared to civilised countries, at about £12k … how many here could live off that?
The wealthiest cohort on the planet gets wealthier
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