State Retirement Pensions: Women
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to page 25 of the Government response to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman's investigation into Women’s State Pension age and associated issues, what the evidential basis is for the statement that awareness among the 45-54 age group that State Pension age was increasing had increased to 90%.
Answered by Torsten Bell
The Attitudes to Pensions: the 2006 Survey was a large-scale survey commissioned by DWP and carried out by the respected National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) and the School of Social Sciences, University of Birmingham. The authors included a mix of academics and research professionals, experienced in survey design and delivery, and the report was quality assured to Government Social Research standards. Almost 2,000 adults took part in the survey, and weightings were applied to ensure results were representative of the population.
The survey report includes the finding that the percentage of women who reported knowing that women’s State Pension age would increase in the future was 90% for women aged 45-54.
The 45-54 female subgroup has a sample size of 203. With a sample of this size, we can get a reliable estimate of the percentage of women among this group who reported knowing that the women’s State Pension age would increase in the future. Using confidence intervals, we can have 95% confidence that this figure would be around 85-95%. The 95% level is a widely accepted standard of confidence. Therefore, even at the lower estimate, the data shows the vast majority of 1950s women were aware.
The 2006 Attitudes to Pensions Survey report is available online at
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