Work and Pensions written question – answered at on 4 February 2011.
Rachel Reeves
Shadow Minister (Work and Pensions)
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate he has made of the level of (a) pensions savings and (b) other savings for 56 year old (i) men and (ii) women.
Steve Webb
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions
The information requested is as follows:
(a) Estimates of pension wealth held by individuals in private pensions aged 56 in
2006-08, by gender are shown in the table:
| £ | ||
| Median( 1) | Mean( 1) | |
| Men | 52,800 | 195,800 |
| Women | 9,100 | 94,500 |
| For all aged 56 | 24,500 | 143,700 |
| (1) Includes those with zero pension wealth Source: Wealth and Assets Survey 2006-08 | ||
(b) The Wealth and Assets Survey is our main source of data for estimates on financial wealth. However, unlike pension wealth, the estimates for financial wealth are provided at household level and are not available by age and gender at the individual level.
Extensive analysis of financial wealth at household level using the Wealth and Assets data is available in 'Wealth in Great Britain 2006/08' at the following web link:
Notes
1. We interpreted the question's mention of pensions savings to mean wealth held in private pensions and therefore provided figures in that context. Private pensions are all pensions that are not state basic retirement or state earnings related. There are nine categories included in the estimates of private pension wealth: defined benefit (DB) pensions, defined contribution (DC) pensions and personal pensions to which the individual was contributing at the time of survey, additional voluntary contributions (AVCs) made to current pensions, retained rights in DB and DC schemes, pension funds from which the individual was drawing an income through income drawdown, pensions in payment and pensions expected in the future based on the contributions of a former spouse. The estimates quoted include those individuals with zero pension wealth. The private pension wealth figures provided here were not immediately available from the Wealth and Assets Survey report, and were obtained by carrying out in house analysis of the data.
2. We provide figures for both mean and median private pension wealth. The median may provide a better measure compared to the mean since the distribution of private pension wealth can be skewed by a small number of very large amounts of wealth at the top of the distribution.
3. We interpreted the question's mention of other savings to mean wealth held in financial assets. A general complexity with measuring individual level financial wealth in surveys is that many assets are held jointly by more than one person, particularly within couples. It is for this reason that the 'Wealth in Great Britain 2006/08' report based on the data collected by the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) presents financial assets held by households collectively rather than by each individual.
4. The Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) is a large scale nationally representative longitudinal survey of over 30,000 private households in Great Britain that provides comprehensive information on people's assets and net wealth. The first wave was conducted from July 2006 to June 2008. It collected detailed information on financial and non-financial assets, and wealth components such as savings, pensions, property, mortgages and debt as well as people's attitudes and savings behaviour over time.
Yes0 people think so
No2 people think not
Would you like to ask a question like this yourself? Use our Freedom of Information site.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
