Help the Aged says full benefits take-up will slash pensioner poverty

Help the Aged today called on ministers to automatically pay older people means-tested benefits to lift hundreds of thousands out of poverty.

A study by research body the Institute for Fiscal Studies for Help the Aged found full take-up of council tax benefit, housing benefit and pension credit would lift 500,000 pensioners above the government’s poverty line – 60% of median household income before housing costs.

It also said 500,000 older people would be taken out of what it defined as “deep poverty” – living below half of median household income.

Help the Aged said that 2.2 million older people in the UK live in poverty and that many do not claim the benefits that are rightfully theirs.

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