Core Work

Core Research – funded with income from the PPI’s Supporting Membership Scheme

The PPI’s core research and information activities are funded by regular donations made by Supporting Members. There are 4 levels of membership: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Associate. Membership income funds core activities such as factual research reports (e.g. the Pensions Primer: a guide to the UK pensions system), Pensions Facts, Briefing Notes, consultation responses, speeches and presentations. The membership income is not only essential for the ongoing viability of the PPI as it provides a regular stream of income but the diversity of Members is also crucial to ensuring the PPI’s independence and impartiality.

Briefing Notes and Reports

The PPI produces Briefing Notes on topical policy issues – please click here to see our more recent publications. In addition, the PPI will sometimes publish reports on such topics, where they merit a more detailed investigation.

Consultation Responses

The PPI responds to major Government consultations, Select Committees or other Parliamentary Inquiries on policy on pensions and retirement provision. Please click here to see our more recent submissions.

The Pensions Primer: a guide to the UK pensions system

This guide gives a detailed description of the current UK pensions system. The guide is intended for people wanting to learn about the UK pensions policy framework.
The PPI has produced an updated guide for 2018 reflecting policy changes and benefit uprating announcements. This version of the guide reflects the current position of, and legislated future changes to, the UK pension system as at June 2018. Please click here for the current version.

Pensions Facts

The PPI maintains a compendium of key facts and statistics on pensions and retirement provision in the UK. The aim is to collate into a single place a range of different statistics on demographic change, key state pension and private pension indicators. Key tables will be updated as new data becomes available. Pensions Facts can be viewed here.

Pensions Modelling and Development

The PPI has constructed a suite of micro-simulation models to analyse long-term outcomes from the current UK pensions system and possible reforms. The original development of the models was funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

Each year the PPI conducts a model update exercise in which the latest data are incorporated and the long-term assumptions are reviewed. The models have been designed to allow different types of analysis under different pensions systems:

• The Individual Model projects future state and private pension income for hypothetical individuals with different characteristics.
• The Aggregate Model projects long-term government expenditure on pensions and contracted-out rebates, income from the private pensions system and the fiscal cost of tax relief.
• The Distributional Model projects forward the distribution of pensioner incomes consistently with the Aggregate Model.
• The Dynamic Model uses longitudinal data on people aged over 50 in England (taken from the English Longitudinal Survey of Ageing) to make deterministic projections about future retirement outcomes using a dynamic micro-simulation model.

The models have been developed in recent years: our individual modelling capability has been expanded with a stochastic investment model and the aggregate model can now model public sector and the private sector pension schemes separately. Future developments included improved modelling of retirement decisions and transitions into retirement, including the holding of investments beyond State Pension Age. These recent developments were also funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

DWP Social and Economic Research Framework

The PPI is on the DWP’s Social and Economic Research Framework under the policy areas of Pensions and Ageing. The PPI welcomes contact with regards to collaborative work in these research areas.