Savings, pensions and wealth

At this IFS event, Olivier Blanchard, Professor Emeritus at MIT and former Chief Economist at the IMF, and Jean Tirole, Nobel Prize-winner and Honorary President of the Toulouse School of Economics, presented their report on the major future economic challenges.

In an ongoing programme of research, we aim to examine in detail how pension saving might be expected to change over working life, and how employees and the self-employed behave in practice.

Increasing attention is being given to the ‘gender pension gap’ – the fact that on average women have lower private pension wealth and lower income in retirement than men.

At this event, researchers shared findings from two new reports, examining when individuals should save for retirement – given factors like earnings growth and children – and how employees save in practice.

Inheritances have been growing as a share of national income in the UK since the 1970s. This trend looks set to continue as generations at older ages

Presentation of "Employer Responsibility in Disability Insurance: Evidence from the Netherlands" at the Dutch Employee Insurance Agency (UWV).

The last decade has seen considerable change to the pensions environment. This event included a keynote talk from the Minister for Pensions and Financial Inclusion, a presentation on a programme of IFS research in this area over the last two years, and an expert panel discussion of the implications of the research.

People on middle and higher incomes need to save privately for retirement, but deciding when and how much to save is difficult. One particular trade-off people face is how much to save in a pension and how much to save for, or spend on, owner occupied housing. In new research published today we examine interactions between housing and and pension saving at two distinct stages of life.

The measures taken to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, resulting from both policy and consumers’ changes in behaviour, have had major impacts on consumer spending patterns. In this briefing note, we explore how consumer spending has evolved, both during lockdown and in the recovery phase since.

Figures out today from the ONS show that headline inflation over the year to September was just 0.5%. With earlier figures showing a fall in earnings of 1% this means that under the “triple lock” next April would see the basic state pension and new state pension both increase by 2½%. This would bring the increase in the basic state pension over the last eleven years up to 41%, compared to 25% if it had been indexed in line with inflation or by 22% if it had been indexed in line with earnings.

The proportion of the self-employed saving in a private pension has declined dramatically over the past two decades, leading to continued concerns about their financial preparations for retirement. At this event we presented the findings of new IFS research that has examined this trend.