From Me to You? How the UK State Pension System Redistributes

Rowena Crawford
Soumaya Keynes
Gemma Tetlow

Published on 6 August 2014

In this report summary, we outline key findings of a new IFS working paper which uses detailed data on households’ histories of employment, earnings and contributions to the National Insurance (NI) system to examine the degree of intragenerational redistribution achieved by the UK state pension system for a cohort born in the 1930s.

The redistributive objectives of the UK state pension system have often been somewhat ambiguous, and have changed over time as different governments have come and gone. In this report summary, we outline key findings of a new IFS working paper (wp14/20) which uses detailed data on households’ histories of employment, earnings and contributions to the National Insurance (NI) system to examine the degree of intragenerational redistribution achieved by the UK state pension system for a cohort born in the 1930s.

These findings will be presented at a briefing on 9 September, alongside several other pieces of work which shed light on how financial preparedness for retirement differs across cohorts and important differences within cohorts.