Royal London found that 149,317 pensioners who had reached state pension age from April 2016 were receiving a state pension of less than £100 a week – and 17,546 pensioners were receiving less than £20 a week
Only around half of people receiving the new state pension last year were getting the full weekly amount – and almost 150,000 were on less than £100 per week, according to analysis.
Royal London said that 1,737,342 of 3,407,567 people receiving the new pension received the full weekly amount in 2023.
It made the calculations using DWP data from spring 2023.
The full state pension for 2024/25 is £221.20 a week, up from £203.85 last year.
Royal London found that 149,317 pensioners who had reached state pension age from April 2016 were receiving a state pension of less than £100 a week – and 17,546 pensioners were receiving less than £20 a week.
It also said that 5,677 people were receiving less than £10 a week.
Royal London said a previous Opinium survey it had commissioned among 4,000 people across the UK in June 2023 suggested that one in five people aged 66 and over were living on the state pension alone.
Pensioners on low incomes may be entitled to claim pension credit, which can top up their incomes and the DWP recently launched an awareness drive to boost take-up.
While almost 1.4 million pensioners are already receiving pension credit, there are up to an estimated 880,000 households eligible for the support who are yet to claim.
People may be able to boost their retirement income by making extra national insurance contributions to make up for missing years.
Sarah Pennells, consumer finance specialist at Royal London, said: We often talk about the full state pension amount, but these figures show how many pensioners are getting only a fraction of that.
One of the main reasons why people miss out on the full state pension is because they have gaps in their national insurance record, but they may not realise this until it is too late to do anything about it, she said.
You may have national insurance gaps because, for instance, you were working but had low earnings, were unemployed but did not claim benefits, were a high earner with young children who did not register for child benefit, or because you were working abroad.
The good news is that, even if you have gaps in your national insurance record going back over a decade or more, it may still be possible to top up your national insurance contributions and increase the amount of state pension you are entitled to, she said.
Under the new state pension system, you do not get any state pension at all if you have fewer than 10 years’ national insurance, so it is important to check your national insurance contribution record, she added.