On a recent edition of the BBC’s Question Time, at around 24 minutes, panellist Alastair Campbell said: “Because we’re an ageing population, when I was growing up – and people were getting their pension – there were 20 people of working age for every pensioner. And they were working. Now, you’ve got fewer than three.”

Mr Campbell also said that his podcast co-host Rory Stewart had made the same point a week earlier. On the previous week’s edition, at around 10 minutes, Mr Stewart said: “When the welfare state was set up, there were 20 working people for every one retired person. Today, there are fewer than three working people for every retired person.”

Based on the most recently available statistics, there are slightly more than three working age people for every pensioner in the UK. It is projected to fall below three in the decades to come.

This has reduced since the introduction of the basic state pension in 1948, when it was around five working age people per pensioner. During Mr Campbell’s youth in the 1960s it was a ratio of around 4:1. If Mr Stewart places the creation of the welfare state in the early 20th century when the first state pension was established, then his figure appears to be broadly accurate.

The Office for National Statistics keeps track of the estimated population of the UK. In a dataset covering 1838 to 2023, the ONS recorded 43,199,200 people aged between 16 and 65 in the UK as of mid-2022. This is the working age population, as the state pension age is 66 (rising to 67 by 2028). At the same time, there were 12,006,567 people aged 66 and over. This equates to 3.6 working age people per pensioner, or alternatively 278 pensioners for every 1,000 people of working age.

A government review into the state pension age in 2023 projected that this ratio would rise from 280 pensioners per 1,000 people of working age to around 393 pensioners. This would be the equivalent of 2.5 people of working age for every pensioner. While this is “fewer than three” as claimed by Mr Campbell and Mr Stewart, this figure is a projection for the year 2070.

The ONS data breaking down the UK population by age goes back to 1971, but it does record the population for Great Britain in 1961 (thus excluding Northern Ireland from the data). As Mr Campbell was born in 1957, he could reasonably be said to have been “growing up” at this time.

In 1961, the state pension age was 65 for men and 60 for women. Working age men and women were counted at 31,107,039, and those over state pension age at 7,566,439. This is equivalent to 4.1 working age people per pensioner, far from the 20 that Mr Campbell claimed. The total UK population would have to have reached around 160 million to provide 20 working age people for every pensioner.

Mr Stewart’s point was slightly different. He pegged the ratio of 20:1 to the introduction of the welfare state. This could mean 1948, when the NHS was created and the Basic State Pension introduced. Or it could mean 1909, when the Old Age Pension was created. And although he used the phrase “working people”, for this analysis it is assumed he meant working age people rather than those actually employed.

For 1948, the ONS data only covers England and Wales and is divided into bands of five years, for example grouping 16-year-olds into a 15-19 category, and rounded to the nearest thousand. Using this information, the number of working age men and women was 28,367,000. Counting men 65 and over with women who were 60 and over, the number of pensioners stood at 5,811,000. That is 4.9 workers per pensioner. While this does represent a significantly younger population, it is still nowhere near Mr Stewart’s claim.

The same ONS table as the 1948 data goes as far back as 1911, just two years after the introduction of the first state pension. This was paid at the age of 70. There were 23,929,000 people aged between 15 and 69, with just 1,092,000 living past the pensionable age. That would mean there were 22 working age people for every pensioner.

Question Time – 2024: 05/12/2024 – BBC iPlayer

Question Time – 2024: 28/11/2024 – BBC iPlayer

Population estimates for the UK, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – Office for National Statistics (archived)

UK population estimates 1838 to 2023 edition spreadsheet (archived)

State Pension age Review 2023 (archived)

Life so far – Alastair Campbell (archived)

The history of the State Pension | Charles Stanley (archived)