Work and Pensions written question – answered at on 28 January 2014.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will estimate the number of pensioners living in poverty in (a) Coventry, (b) Coventry North East constituency, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England in each of the last three years.
The annually published Households Below Average Income National Statistics report provides figures on pensioners living below 60% of median income, after housing costs are deducted from income. The sample size is not sufficient to provide estimates for constituencies. As such, figures for Coventry North East are not available.
Three year averages are used for the nations and regions of the UK to account for volatility. The latest figures available, covering 2009-10 to 2011-12 show that the number of pensioners living in low income in the West Midlands is 200,000 (15%), while the number of pensioners living in low income in England is 1.4 million (15%).
Figures are rounded to the nearest 100,000 and whole percentage point.
Notes:
1. These statistics are based on Households Below Average Income (HBAI) data sourced from the 2009-10 Family Resources Survey (FRS). This uses disposable household income, adjusted using modified OECD equivalisation factors for household size and composition, as an income measure as a proxy for standard of living.
2. Net disposable incomes have been used to answer the question. This includes earnings from employment and self-employment, state support, income from occupational and private pensions, investment income and other sources. Income tax payments, National insurance contributions, council tax/domestic rates and some other payments are deducted from incomes.
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Annotations
George Morley
Posted on 29 Jan 2014 3:42 pm (Report this annotation)
Any poverty figure quoted is a poor reflection on the government and the DWP in particular where the Pensions Minister obviously approves of this situation as he condones poverty with the pensioners living abroad by the removal of the indexing leaving over 500,000 pensioners with no annual increases ever to their pension and a certain drift into poverty. In any case the pension in the UK is just about the poorest pension in the world let alone the EU. No poverty for ministers in retirement I notice.