Have this week's events brought good news or bad for older
people?
By Rebecca Law, Media and PR Officer
This has been, and still is, a good week for
Professor Stephen Hawking who celebrates his 70th
birthday this Sunday. In an interview with New Scientist (and
reported in
The Guardian this week), the physicist who has taken
on the nature of space-time and has worked on the inflation of the
early universe and a quantum theory of gravity, admitted there is
still one thing that boggles his mind: women. He said he spends
most of the day thinking about them. "They are," he said, "a
complete mystery".
An international conference, held in his honour, kicked off this
Thursday in Cambridge and the meeting will, as The
Guardian reports,"culminate in a public symposium on Sunday
when some of the world's most prominent physicists give a series of
talks on the state of the universe."
But it's a bad week for many of us who are
slightly younger. New figures from the Department of Work and
Pensions reveal that just 11.6 million out of 30.4 million working
age people (that's 38%) are saving for their retirement. The figure
is at its lowest level for over a decade and suggests we could be
in for a nasty shock on retirement.
Experts have blamed the economic downturn, which has left
families struggling with rising bills as well as rising
unemployment levels. Compounded with this, annuity rates for
private pensioners have also hit an all-time low; up to 14 million
private sector workers will retire with far smaller pensions than
their parents.
Pensions minister, Steve Webb, quoted in the Daily Mail
this week, said: "with fewer people saving into a pension, lower
annuity rates and an average of 23 years in retirement, many people
could face a poorer future in their later lives". Read the
Daily Mail piece
here.
From October this year, employers in larger firms will start
automatically enrolling workers in workplace pension schemes. This
will go some way to ensuring that people start making provisions
for their retirement. While people will be able to opt out of the
scheme, it may also give some the impetus to look around and make
sure they are getting the best deal.
