New data has highlighted that people with disabilities have a private pension pot of just 36% of the UK average.
The research, commissioned by pension provider Now: Pensions and carried out by the Pensions Policy Institute, revealed that people with a disability who are approaching retirement age have a £47,980 average pension wealth, compared with the average pot size of £130,928, a difference of almost £83,000.
According to the research, people with a disability are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as non-disabled people, and are often limited by the amount and type of work available to them. This means that many people end up being trapped in low-paying or part-time jobs and thereby excluded from automatic enrolment, which kicks in once the minimum earnings threshold of £10,000 is met.
Almost three in 10 (28%) people with disabilities work part-time compared with the non-disabled population at 20%.
A total of 83% of eligible disabled workers participate in auto-enrolment schemes, which is 2.9 million people, compared with 80% of non-disabled eligible employees. However, approximately 15%, or 500,000 disabled people in work, do not qualify.
Joanne Segars OBE, chair of trustees at Now: Pensions, said: “People with disabilities are one of the under pensioned groups that we have been campaigning on behalf of for some time. We believe it is imperative that we continue to raise awareness of the discrimination that many people go through which has a huge impact on the ability of people to save for their later life.
“We want to make pension saving fairer for everybody in the UK and our policy proposal to remove the £10,000 earnings threshold would help get a further 500,000 disabled people saving for their retirement.”