Monday 16th July 2007
Some 500,000 poverty-stricken pensioners could experience a more comfortable retirement by obtaining benefits already available to them, it has been suggested.
Research conducted on behalf of Help the Aged shows that benefits including council tax, housing and pension credit could lift half a million retirees out of poverty.
The charity for the elderly is now urging that the benefits system be simplified in order to make more Britons aware of the options open to them.
Investigators from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) undertook the study on behalf of the charity.
They found that the level of poverty among those in retirement is likely to remain fixed for the next decade unless efforts are made to help pensioners claim the benefits they are entitled to.
Policy manager for Help the Aged Anna Pearson said: "This report is the undeniable proof that pensioner poverty can be overcome - in terms of options for tackling it, the government is spoilt for choice.
"Automatic payment of benefits would make a massive difference to older people devastated by pensioner poverty - half a million pensioners lives could change dramatically overnight."
Some 100,000 retirees could be lifted out of poverty by linking the state pension to earnings from 2008, rather than 2012, the IFS proposes.
Meanwhile, 3.6 million women above retirement age would benefit if the state pension was made available to all retirees, the researchers add.
Help the Aged predicts that a third of the population will be over the age of 65 by the latter half of the 21st century.
The charity continues that if its proposals were implemented across the whole of the UK - rather than just in England, which is the basis for the calculations - there could be up to a 20 per cent rise in the number of residents who could be lifted out of poverty.
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