Pensioners accumulated untold levels of wealth under the Conservatives, new data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows.
The gap between the total wealth, excluding private pension pots, of typical retired and working couples doubled between 2010 and 2022 — from roughly £100,000 to £200,000.
This was the result of a decade of appreciation and accumulation — from savings and investments to cars and property.
For those below state pension age, their sum grew by 37pc — for those above, it increased by 61pc.
Voters in their golden years had dutifully rewarded the Tories at the ballot box three times in a row during this period. But with Labour now in charge, boom time for boomers has passed.
The coalition government introduced the triple lock in 2011 – committing to uprate the state pension by the highest of earnings growth, inflation or 2.5pc.
Designed to ensure retiree earnings were never left behind by the cost of living or working people’s incomes, in practice it has helped them surge ahead. The law saw it increase by a record 10.1pc in April 2023 – far more than the 6.3pc for the employed.
These were lucrative years for old-age pensioners, whose financial assets – current accounts, Isas, stocks, shares and cash – more than doubled.
The latest Wealth and Assets Survey found childless pensioner couples had £30,100 of such riches back in 2010, a figure having risen to £62,600 by 2022.
As for the rest, their accounts are less than a third as stocked, with a median of just £18,600.
But with a pensions minister who previously advocated for ditching the triple lock, the expensive policy’s days may be numbered.
Those in retirement may already have amassed as much “stuff” as possible. The value of their physical assets peaked at £62,500 in 2018, before falling slightly to £60,500 by 2022.
This includes the contents of their homes and garages, from crockery to artwork and lawnmowers to Land Rovers. Despite the slip of recent years, it had grown by half for pensioners (48.3pc) and not even a third (31.6pc) for working-age couples.
For single-person households, this difference is even starker — lone pensioners saw double the rate of growth of their younger peers, by 18 to 9.1pc.
The benefits of pairing up in life are most evident when trying to get on the property ladder.
Only when over 65 did single households register any housing wealth at all — working-age singles with and without children had no such assets to speak of when surveyed during the pandemic.
In fact, median property wealth for singles below state pension age fell to zero in 2012 and never recovered. They spent the decade trapped in the rental market.
Story Continues
