Nearly half of the older adults who left the workforce during the first year of the pandemic ended up in relative poverty, new research has revealed.
New research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, shows that 48% of 50- to 70-year-olds who left the workforce in 2020–21 ended up in relative poverty.
The study also found that the 50- to 70-year-olds who left the workforce during the first year of the pandemic cut their food expenditure by around £60 per week on average and had lower levels of well-being than previous cohorts of people who had recently stopped working.
IFS’ research also found that this cohort was less likely to receive pension incomes than those who had stopped working in previous years.
Xiaowei Xu, a senior research economist at IFS and an author of the research, said: ‘It is often assumed that older people who left the workforce during the pandemic were wealthy individuals retiring in comfort.
‘Our analysis shows that those who left in the first year of the pandemic experienced a sharp rise in poverty, despite overall poverty rates falling that year, and also suffered large falls in well-being.
‘Some of this group might well be amenable to coming back into the workforce with the right opportunities, and there are signs that some are returning already.’
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