The state pension ‘postcode lottery’ that millions face is today laid bare by the Daily Mail’s new calculator.

Retirees in parts of the country with the lowest life expectancy will get just six years of payouts, according to our analysis of current Government plans. 

Worth just shy of £12,000 every year at present, that would entitle someone to draw around £72,000.

This may be cut even further if Labour hikes the state pension age to 70, effectively forcing men in areas such as Blackpool – where life expectancy for men born today sits at 73 – to work almost until they die.

In stark contrast, retirees in Kensington and Chelsea – where women born today are expected to live until they turn 86 – will be in line for two decades of payouts, a sum in the region of £227,000 at current prices.

Yet, by the time both retire, their actual pension pots would be tens of thousands of pounds higher because of inflation, although the gap would remain.

To find out how many years of state pension you are set for, input your date of birth, sex, and postcode into our tool below. 

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Built using Government data, it will reveal life expectancy in your area and say when you’ll be able to officially retire, as well as how much you’ll be able to draw from the state pension over your lifetime.

Lucie Spencer, a financial planning partner at Evelyn Partners, said the UK’s retirement system resulted in a ‘very uneven postcode lottery’ due to the wide disparity in life expectancy.

She told the Daily Mail: ‘Those who live in the wealthier London boroughs, home counties, and other affluent spots, on average can expect a longer and healthier life than those in the less wealthy areas of the UK. 

‘The difference in life expectancy can be more than a decade.

‘It is arguable that if we keep raising the state pension age, then we are putting this key benefit further out of reach of the poorer retirees who not only rely on it more but also are likely to draw on it for fewer years before they die than the better-off.’ 

Our tool doesn’t include private pension pots, which employees are typically allowed to access once they turn 55. 

Until 2010, men were able to claim their state pension when they turned 65. Women could start getting the payouts on their 60th birthday.

Increases in life expectancy saw costs shoot up for the Treasury, which hiked the ages to recoup billions.

As things stand now, men and women’s state pension age is 66, yet this is slated to rise to 67 between 2026 and 2028.

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Currently the legal position is that it will reach 68 from 2044-46.

But a previous report by former Tesco director Baroness Neville-Rolfe cautioned that it might need to be accelerated.

Alarm has been sounded about the sustainability of the ‘triple lock’, which means the state’s old-age payouts rise by whichever is highest out of rates of inflation, earnings or 2.5 per cent every year.

With the triple lock in place, it has been estimated that the retirement age would have to hit 74 by 2065-67 in order to keep spending at around 6 per cent of GDP.

This would exceed the average life expectancy of men in Blackpool by a year. 

Labour has promised to stick to the triple lock for the whole of this parliament.

Reviews of the official pension age are already taking place as the ageing population piles pressure on the public purse.

Dr Suzy Morrissey, in charge of the review, is assessing the benefits of tying the age to life expectancy. 

Denmark, which already adopts that system, this year hiked its retirement age to 70 – affecting everyone born in 1971 or later. 

For the poorest fifth of households, estimates show the state pension makes up 71 per cent of income

For the poorest fifth of households, estimates show the state pension makes up 71 per cent of income

Who can get a state pension?

Not everyone is entitled to the full state pension, which is a regular payment from the Government until you die. Eligibility depends on meeting certain criteria.

As well as being the required age, you must have made National Insurance contributions during your working life, or have paid voluntary National Insurance, or received credits from the government for years spent caring or other issues.

Until April 2016, workers needed to have 30 years of qualifying National Insurance contributions to get the full basic state pension, but everyone retiring since then needs 35 years of contributions to get the new flat rate state pension.

The full flat rate state pension is £230.25 a week or nearly £12,000 from April 2025.

People who retired before April 2016 on a full basic state pension receive £176.45 a week or around £9,200 a year.

The state pension increases every year according to the triple lock, which means whichever is the highest of earnings growth, the inflation rate or 2.5 per cent.

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Experts have warned adopting a similar scheme here would be ‘chaos’ for financial planning. 

Reacting to the Daily Mail’s findings, Lib Dem work and pensions spokesperson, Steve Darling, said: ‘The Government needs to urgently look at helping pensioners, by bringing down energy bills and getting on with reforming social care, which is on the brink of collapse and leaving pensioners fearing they will have nothing to leave behind to their loved ones.’ 

Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said: ‘Narrowing the gap in life expectancy for older people is an important goal and to achieve it there will be a need to start young and keep at it, since advantage and disadvantage accumulate over a lifetime.’

Catherine Foot, of Standard Life Centre for the Future of Retirement, said: ‘In areas with lower life expectancy and poorer health outcomes, working into your late 60s isn’t a realistic option for many—yet these are often the communities most at risk of financial insecurity in later life.

‘The postcode you live in shouldn’t determine how long you live—or how well you live in retirement.’

The state pension ‘makes up a large part of incomes’ even for wealthier retirees, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says.  

For the poorest fifth of households, estimates show the payout makes up 71 per cent of income. 

For the new state pension, you need ten years of National Insurance contributions to get the minimum amount and 35 years to get the full amount.

And although women tend to live longer than men, because they tend to pay less National Insurance contributions, they usually receive a smaller pension.

For those born in the early 1940s, women receive 25 per cent less state pension than men on average, according to a House of Commons Library report published this month. For those born in the early 1950s, the gap is 5 per cent. 

Due to changes in state policy, the gap is diminishing and state pension incomes between men and women are likely to be equalised by 2041.

The difference was because women typically tend to work in lower-paid and part-time jobs, or take time off work to have a family.

According to the law, the government is required to review the state pension age every six years, with the most recent one occurring in 2023.

It is widely expected that the retirement age will rise again in the coming decades due to the spiralling costs as people continue to live longer.

The latest Office for Budget Responsibility assessment projects that pensioner spending will rise to £182bn by 2029.

Methodology 

The tool was created using official data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The tool does not display any data for those over the age of 95 (i.e. born before 18 August 1935) as no life expectancy data is available for them. 

For anyone born before April 6, 1960, the tool displays a message saying ‘You have already reached State Pension Age’.

The state pension age logic was calculated from the UK Government’s official policy paper on the timetable.