Major state pension age update as retirement could become 80: expert

The state pension age could have to rise towards 80 in extreme circumstances if Britons live much longer than current forecasts suggest, according to a detailed analysis by pensions consultancy Barnett Waddingham. The figures, compiled by Jack Carmichael, an associate at the firm, are not a forecast but a “stress test” of what might be required if life expectancy outpaces official assumptions.

Mr Carmichael said: “My figures are showing a stress test to what might need to happen to the State Pension Age, in the absence of any other changes, if life expectancy were to improve faster than expected.” At present, state pension spending is about 4.6% of GDP. On the Office for National Statistics’ central projection, it climbs to 6.3% by 2055–56. An ONS “high-life” scenario pushes that to 6.7%. But under Mr Carmichael’s more extreme “amplified” scenario, costs rise to 7.87% of GDP — a gap equivalent to tens of billions of pounds a year.

Carmichael’s spreadsheet shows that the extreme “amplified” longevity scenario would begin to place severe pressure on the state pension system from the 2060s onwards. By around 2070, his proxy calculations suggest the state pension age would need to rise towards 80 to keep costs in balance. He stresses this is not a prediction but a stress test of what could happen if life expectancy across society improved much faster than official assumptions.

The spreadsheet uses a proxy calculation, comparing remaining life expectancy at different ages, to work out how much later people would need to retire if the state pension age was the only lever to close that gap. The result is stark: the state pension age would need to rise from 66 today to around 80.

Mr Carmichael said: “The key risk I’m illustrating is the level of longevity risk in the state pension system, and what could happen if life expectancy rises faster than expected.

"Life expectancy is a difficult question for policymakers – a key outcome of a significant proportion of both public and private spending results in increases in life expectancy (a big positive for society), but leads to knock-on consequences for future public spending.

“Even in the central projection, the State Pension Age may need to rise in the future to 74 to balance cost, my scenario builds on that to illustrate the risk around that number.”

He said his model assumes a narrowing of the health gap between different groups in society. “My scenario assumes that you break the population into three broad groups (low, middle and high affluence) and increase the life expectancy for the low and middle affluence individuals to the same life expectancy as the high affluence individuals.

"This is not an unreasonable outcome in the future… these improvements also wouldn’t require any medical advancements – everything we have already to allow the most affluent to live longer are available to us, the scenario assumes these can then be used by low and middle affluence groups.”

He added: “There are generally two ways in which life expectancy improves in the future: medical advancements that generally affect the whole population at the same time… or accelerating current medicine best practice to cover all affluence levels.”

Mr Carmichael said projecting 50 years ahead is “hugely uncertain”. He explained: “The more exact approach would be to determine exactly what the population distribution looks like under the projections and use that to calculate total annual cost.

"The approach of using life expectancy is a proxy of this exact population distribution approach, but I’d expect it to be a reasonable proxy. For example, as life expectancy increases then you’d have more people living at the higher ages.

"Assuming the exact scenario happens then I’d be fairly confident in the figure, but there is so much uncertainty around that scenario (not just life expectancy but also the future evolution of the UK economy) that it’s difficult to assign a ‘probability’ to a scenario arising.”

He said the politics would be formidable. “I agree that raising the State Pension Age beyond 70 is an extremely difficult decision to take… the key point is that the current features of the system (triple lock increases, no means testing, a single State Pension Age and a difficult tax and spend financial situation) means there are limited levers available to the government to manage the costs if life expectancy was to increase faster than expected.”

UK life expectancy growth has slowed since 2011, after a period of sharp gains at the start of the 21st century. The pandemic and flat real-terms health spending exacerbated the slowdown.

Mr Carmichael said: “Life expectancy growth has slowed in recent years ie life expectancy is still predicted to rise in the future, but at a slower rate than previously thought.

"This reflects a period of low improvements in life expectancy observed since 2011, following a period of very high life expectancy improvements at the start of the 21st century.

'Some of the features of this recent slowdown are expected to be transient… Speaking to medical experts I get the feeling they remain positive about the future of life expectancy improvements, both medical (for example, mRNA vaccines, usage of AI in medical imaging and diagnostics, obesity medication) and non-medical (for example, the digitalisation of the NHS, the smoking/vaping ban).”

For now, the idea of a state pension age approaching 80 belongs firmly in the realm of modelling exercises. But the analysis highlights the scale of the challenge if Britain sees another surge in longevity: whether through later retirement, higher taxes, or cuts to benefits, the fiscal strain will be unavoidable.