For decades, one of the arguments trotted out for mass immigration has been that “they will pay for our pensions”. In 2004, the Guardian reported migrants were “key to [the] pensions crisis”. Over two decades later, economist Richard Murphy makes the same argument: “Without [economic migrants], we will not be able to pay the pensions”. On the face of it, the argument seems simple. More migration means more workers; more workers means more people to pay for pensioners; if the population of workers increases faster than the population of pensioners, the “pensions crisis” is solved.
There is one awkward problem: after thirty years of mass migration, the basic stats have barely budged.
We at Migration Watch have looked into the figures.
In 1994, there were 10,250,000 people claiming a state pension, and 25,070,000 people aged 16-64 in work (rounded to the nearest ten thousand). Put another way, for every 100 pensioners, there were 245 working-age people paying for those pensions through work.
Thirty years later, in 2024, there were 12,900,000 people claiming a state pension, and 32,130,000 people aged 16-64 in work: or, for every 100 pensioners, 249 working-age people in work.
At this point, migration advocates will argue that this underscores their case. Without the mass migration efforts of the last thirty years, the ratio of pensioners to workers might have been even greater. The issue, of course, is that the problem is still there. Enormous, demographically catastrophic mass migration has been pushed on a country that repeatedly rejected it at the ballot box. The pensions crisis remains unresolved while population growth – driven by migration – continues at a historically unprecedented pace, as young migrants too grow older and become the pensioners of the future.
Looking to the future, the Office for Budget Responsibility still projects the old-age dependency ratio to rise from 31% in 2023 to around 47% over the next half-century. The reason is obvious. Migrants might be younger when they arrive, but they do not remain young forever. The OBR itself warns supposed fiscal benefits of mass migration will be offset by greater pressures on pensions as those migrants age and retire.
This is the flaw in using immigration as a demographic Ponzi scheme. Each new cohort can briefly offset the growing pensioner dependency ratio, but if migrants remain permanently, they eventually become pensioners themselves. Maintaining the ratio then requires another cohort behind them, and behind that cohort, and so on… until the original population has been almost entirely eclipsed.
Meanwhile, the massive inflow of people from overseas creates its own economic problems. The Migration Advisory Committee notes that rapid population growth can reduce capital per worker unless investment keeps pace, while increasing demand for roads, rail and public buildings. Their summary of OBR modelling found that increasing net migration by 200,000 annually might raise GDP by 1.5%, but GDP per head by just 0.1% if capital adjusts fully — and could reduce GDP per head by 0.4% if it does not. The MAC has also concluded that migration’s wage effects are small overall but can be negative for lower-paid workers. To make matters worse, Britain’s real-world productivity growth has stagnated, and at least £9 billion (likely more) leaves the British economy each year in remittances by migrant workers to their homelands.
Not only is the worker to pensioner ratio essentially unchanged since the 1990s, the migration obsession of successive governments has added dozens of other crises to our economy.
The data clearly show using migration to plug the gap hasn’t worked. Never-ending mass migration is not the answer. Indeed, it exacerbates the problem. We say, if you want to solve the pension conundrum, start by calling a halt to the migration Ponzi scheme, now!
