Indicator
Trends in income growth for working-age and pensioner households
Published
16 July 2024
Last updated
25 July 2025
Time to read
About 2 mins
About 2 mins
Key points
- Pensioner households’ median net income grew by 88% between 1996/97 and 2023/24.
- Between 1996/97 and 2023/24, median net income grew by 42% for working-age households and by 51% for households with dependent children.
Inadequate income can be a source of stress and limit access to goods, services and social participation, which are all necessary for good health. A lack of income growth can limit improvements in health.
This chart shows growth in the median incomes (after housing costs) of pensioner and working-age households since 1996/97.
- Incomes of pensioner households, working-age households, and households with children grew at similar rates between 1996/97 and 2003/04.
- From 2003/04 onwards, income growth for working-age households and for households with children was stagnant, while the incomes of pensioner households continued to grow.
- After the financial crisis, working-age household median income actually declined from £563 in 2008/09 to £532 in 2013/14. Households with children also saw declining incomes, although less acutely and a bit later from £472 in 2010/11 to £455 in 2013/14. For all three household types, income growth has been slow since 2010/11.
- More recently, between 2013/14 and 2021/22, income for working-age households grew by £71 (13.5%) outstripping the growth in pensioner household incomes of £45 (9%), but not catching up with larger increases in pensioners’ incomes in earlier years. However, since 2021/22 incomes for all groups have been stagnating or dropping.
- Since 2021/22 incomes of working-age and households with children have slightly dropped, while incomes for pensioner households have remained the same.
- Years shown are 3-year pooled averages, to maximise sample sizes. For example 2002/03 is a 3-year pooling of 2000/01, 2001/02 and 2002/03. Data for 2020/21 have not been included in the pooling, so 2021/22 and 2022/23 figures are 2-year pooled averages. This is in line with the Department for Work and Pensions’ guidance related to data quality during the COVID-19 pandemic, when data were affected by the pandemic and were subject to additional uncertainty. Data for these periods should be viewed with caution and in line with broader trends.
- Income is equivalised, which means it is adjusted for household size to reflect economies of scale: for example, a household of four needs more income for the same standard of living as a household of one, but not four times as much.
- Housing costs are deducted from income, to reflect that people with lower incomes in particular have fewer options for meeting their housing costs, relative to their income.
- The underlying figures are adjusted for inflation and presented in constant CPI price terms.
- The category ‘pensioner households’ is the technical term used in the Households below average income (HBAI) statistics, produced by the Department for Work and Pensions. ‘Pensioner’ is not our preferred wording at the Health Foundation but is accurate to use in this context.
Source: Department for Work and Pensions, Households Below Average Income, UK, 1994/95 to 2023/24
