Like the IFS, the Fabian Society have found that  out of all UK adults, it’s people currently in their sixties who are most at risk of  experiencing poverty.

Those at risk need to find paid work and if they can’t, they need to be treated by the state as if they were, they need to be given an alternative wage through the benefit system and they need to continue to build credits for what should be easier years ahead.

This is how the latest Fabian publication introduces the subject

People usually associate the years before state pension age with affluence, not poverty. But the UK is facing a hidden poverty crisis among 60 to 65-year-olds. A quarter of people aged 60 to 65 live in poverty – the highest poverty rate for any adult age group.

In this new research, the Fabian Society’s Sasjkia Otto looks at the roots of the problem and presents a strategy to address it.

Solving poverty ahead of the state pension age will require long-term action targeting people at every stage of working life. We need better health, better jobs, lifelong learning and careers support, more pension savings, and stronger social security for everyone of working-age.

But interventions are also needed now to support people over 55 to stay in work, to return to work quickly or to achieve higher living standards if they have little prospect of working much again. Solutions need to come at the problem from two directions: support for longer working lives, and improved financial support for those who cannot work more.

There is nothing particularly startling about this finding except the depth of the problem. More than one in three of people over 6o but below state pension age are not working and in poverty. Even among those in work 15% of one in 7 are officially “poor”.

As a 63 year old, I am conscious that work is not getting easier. I have the advantage of earning from sedentary work , I do not have to overstrain my limbs. But were I required to stack the shelf, sweep the street or cook school meals, I am not quite sure I would be able to carry out full time work.

The concern that most older people have is that the act of work could lead to incapacity. It’s not just older people who fear this, the DWP are terrified by the incidence of older people who are finding themselves unable to work

Latest figures out this morning from @ONS don’t provide much evidence that the government’s drive to reduce ‘economic inactivity’ is going especially well: pic.twitter.com/6GzqEErHDL

— Steve Webb (@stevewebb1) April 16, 2024

There has been some concern that the ONS numbers only take us through to 64 and not 66 (state pension age)

Why does it stop at age 64 when SPA is 66+? Presumably to mask the real problem of raising SPA beyond what our bodies can reasonably cope with. pic.twitter.com/FS4skfpUPX

— INorBY2020 (@INorBY2020) April 16, 2024

But more fundamentally , the post-COVID morbidity of the nation is not improving, we appear to be getting sicker.

Reforming sick notes is sensible BUT it’s got almost nothing to do with rise in people who are on disability benefits or out of the labour market entirely due to ill health. Remember a sick note signs you off temporarily when you HAVE a job – it doesn’t sign you on to benefits https://t.co/lr7elzF7D5

— Torsten Bell (@TorstenBell) April 19, 2024

Today Rishi Sunak indicated the Government’s policy on getting elderly workers back to work. It involves taking the responsibility for signing “fit” notes (aka sick notes) from presumably overly compassionate doctors, to less amenable professionals. We don’t know who these might be – I would suggest traffic wardens – if the aim is to be obdurate.

Making it harder to get signed off work does not make you better, but it does make the statistics better and if there is one thing that the Government might be able to do between now and the election , it is to manipulate the numbers.