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Money Box

The Death of Retirement

Can We Afford Retirement?

Duration: 26 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 FMLatest broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 LW

Available for over a year

In this first programme in a seven part series that explores what retirement might look like in the future, Brooke Elias, a 23 year old just starting out in the world of work asks three pension experts about the challenges she's likely to face in providing for her retirement and what the solutions might be.

The population is getting older and the number of pensioners supported by each 1000 people in work is getting bigger. It will need steady rises in state pension age to keep it around its present level of three workers paying for each pensioner.

Until recently the number of people paying into a pension at work was falling. Now, it is rising again with the automatic enrolment of most workers into one. But not enough is going into many workplace pensions to give members a comfortable retirement.

So will tomorrow's pensioners be able to afford what is in effect a twenty year paid holiday at the end of their lives? And will the working population be willing to help them pay for it?

Paul Lewis is joined by former Pensions Minister Baroness Ros Altmann, Tom McPhail, Head of Retirement Policy at the finance company Hargreaves Lansdown and Paul Johnson Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Presenter: Paul Lewis
Producer: Ben Carter
Editor: Andrew Smith. Show less

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