, Uk Governments Have Encouraged Working Individuals to Make Private Provision for Their Pensions. Discuss Whether This Is Likely to Reduce Poverty in the Uk in the Next 50 Years.

Poverty in the UK has always been a problem. However, over the last 30 years, it has become an increasing priority for the UK government. Although the government are able to provide an adequate state pension, for many, it is not enough to sustain their previous standard of living while they were in work. With the value of the savings of many pensioners gradually decreasing, state benefits are becoming more important as retired workers get older, but as the population increases, the UK government are struggling to maintain the welfare of the elderly population

On the one hand it can clearly be argued that although state provided pensions are adequate, they may not necessarily always suit the lifestyles of all elderly people in the UK. If working individuals make private provision for their pensions, this would ensure that workers would get a higher rate of pension benefit when they are older. As figure 7 allows us to understand, after the age of 60, average incomes for both men and women begin to fall very low with women’s average incomes when they are aged 65-69 being only around £105 a week. Older people who are no longer in employment make up much of those in the lower income categories, but if they are persuaded by the UK government to have made private provision for their pensions, then when they are retired and their main income comes from their pensions, they would be able to maintain a higher standard of living rather than one from a low but adequate state pension.

However, although the UK government may be putting a lot of government revenue into campaigns to try and persuade people, the fact that poverty in older people is still a huge problem, we can understand that workers are not being sufficiently persuaded to make private provision for their pensions. Perhaps the government revenue being spent on these campaigns would be better well spent on increasing the pensions of current retired workers. In today’s society, many workers only focus on their lives in the short term rather than in the future when they are no longer working, so they may have other priorities in ways to spend or save their money rather than putting their earnings into private provision for their pension.
Furthermore, it is not only poverty from older people that is a big problem in the UK, there is also great child poverty. As the extract ‘Life Changes’ allows us to understand, when working couples have children, there is a fall in household income as one may have to leave work or only work part time in order to be able to look after the child. Therefore, it can be said that even if more workers are being successfully encouraged to make private provision for their pensions, poverty will keep being a big problem in the UK as poverty occurs with members of the population in all other ages.

Although in can be seen that an increase in workers making private provision for their pensions is unlikely to make much difference to the poverty rate in the UK, it would definitely make a difference. If more people make private arrangements, workers will feel less anxious about retiring as they have more control over how much they will receive as if they solely relied on state pensions, the government is able to limit them if there is an economical crisis. However, we must also consider other changes that could be made to reduce poverty in other areas such as child poverty or poverty due to women in work receiving lower incomes than men in work and also put a focus on these issues.