The underlying report, titled ‘Pensions Adequacy: Housing, Households and Auto-Enrolment’, argues that the standard metrics of retirement readiness focus too narrowly on contribution rates and pot sizes, while systematically underweighting the obligations that reduce the capital available for saving in the first place.

On the first pressure, the report notes that 3.6 million adults aged 20 to 34 now live with their parents, a figure driven by high housing costs and a difficult graduate labour market. Where that cohabitation involves parents providing financial support rather than receiving bill contributions, the household may appear adequately funded on paper while the parent is silently drawing down retirement capital or deferring contributions.

Maike Currie, VP of personal finance at PensionBee, said: “Retirement adequacy isn’t simply about how much money sits in a pension pot. It’s also about the financial commitments that continue throughout our working lives.”

The divorce finding is starker. The report found that more than a third of divorcees did not know the value of their own pension at the point of separation, and only 11% of those with an undrawn pension made arrangements to share it. The outcome is predictable: divorced women consistently hold less pension wealth than their married counterparts, and the gap widens in the decade before retirement age as lower lifetime earnings, career gaps and early pension drawdown compound.

Pension sharing orders have existed in England and Wales since 2000, and the Pensions Advisory Service offers guidance on their use. Yet uptake remains low, suggesting that awareness and access to specialist legal advice at the point of divorce remains insufficient, particularly outside the high-net-worth segment where financial planning is more routinely part of the separation process.

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