Purple Pensions: how pensions and disability interact

Today marks the first day of disability pride month, which celebrates the UK’s 16 million disabled people.

Independent consultancy Barnett Waddingham has analysed the data from its ‘The At Retirement Reckoning’ report through the lens of disability and neurodiversity to understand how this community plans for and views retirement. It finds:

• Employees and self-employed people with disabilities and long-term health conditions are – by and large – less confident about having a comfortable retirement 
• A mere 19% of those with long-term health conditions or disabilities have fully considered needing to go into care within their retirement planning, and the same number have considered needing to employ support at home (e.g., a carer) in their planning, which is similar to the UK average.
• Just 54% of those with long-term health conditions or disabilities say that they can currently afford their desired level of spending on their health and care needs – with only 23% saying that they can always do so.
• Those with long-term health conditions are more likely to have made changes to how their workplace pensions are invested compared to the UK average. More than two in five (43%) say they made changes compared to 34% of UK adults.

If you’d like more information, here’s the full mini-report: https://cdn.roxhillmedia.com/production/email/attachment/1730001_1740000/62191c04652b27335524c658ecab93bc383e5af7.pdf