Seeking a statistic

[fivemack]

In 2011-12, the UK government paid out £74.2 billion of state pension, plus £8.1 billion of pension credit (figures from here; if everyone writing about benefits had these numbers at their fingertips I suspect some of the arguments would be less fervid and more useful). The only figure I can find for the number of people claiming state pension is 12.7 million, from an Institute for Fiscal Studies paper from 2003; ten years is enough for even demographics to have moved far enough that I'd like a newer figure.

A figure I can't seem to find anywhere is the total payout from private pensions. This sounds the kind of thing that a government must determine, I just can't work out where they'd put the answer ...

Legal and General (in small print on page 17 of the annual report) say their annuities paid out £1.4 billion in 2011. I suspect they have more than 5% of the pension market, which indicates that the state pension still dwarfs private pension provision, but I'd quite like to know how big the dwarf is.

Aviva don't seem to mention the figure at all ... insurer financial reports seem to devote much more space to profits ('credit spread income on our annuity portfolio increased by £125 million to £813 million') and to new-business figures ('due to a 24% reduction in [US] annuity sales to £2,839 million') rather than to the kind of flow I'm looking for.

Comments

[antinomy.livejournal.com]

Annuities aren't the only sort of private pension pay-out, of course, because they only become required after a certain age.

I would imagine that employer pensions are probably a larger chunk than genuinely-private provision, too.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

I would agree with this.

A lot of those who have moved to 'private pensions' (by whatever definition) over the last 20 years will still be in work as well, so the current figures don't necessarily reflect what will happen in the next decades.

A *lot* of pensions at the moment are the old SERPS-type which my Dad, for example, is doing very well on. But they no longer exist.

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

My favourite data series helps here; The Effects of Taxes and Benefits on Household Income.

Table 18 gives data on retired households.

The average retired household (in 2010/2011) gets £8134 from private pensions/annuities, £1207 from other private investments, and £7697 from state pension (also a selection of non-contributory state benefits, including £509 income support/pension credit). Overall, the average retired household gets £10153 from private income and £9977 from the state, then pays £2456 in direct taxation.

You might also find useful information in "Pension Trends" - http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/about-ons/our-statistics/publications/pension-trends/index.html - Chapter 6 deals with private pensions.

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

I love the language in "Pension Trends" - particularly the way it keeps talking about people as ‘pensioner benefit units'.