One in five retiring in 2013 'will be below poverty line' One in seven people retiring in 2013 will depend on the state pension - currently £110.15 a week. One in five people retiring in Britain in 2013 will fall below the income poverty line according to a study by Prudential, which also found that nearly a quarter of women will enter retirement entirely dependent on the basic state pension. Prudential's Class of 2013 research, based on interviews with 8,676 over 45-year-olds and another 1,007 people retiring this year, found that many are facing a bleak financial outlook. One in seven (14%) people planning to retire in 2013 will depend on the state pension, currently a maximum of £110.15 a week, as they have no other pension arranged. Among women the figure rises to 23% compared to 8% of men. Even those with a small private pension may still be below the poverty line, which the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates to be £8,254 a year for a single pensioner in the UK. Prudential found that 18% of people retiring this year would have an income below that level. Many overestimate just how much they will receive from the state, on averaging guessing at a figure that is £600 a year more than they will actually receive. Around one in 10 said they have no idea what the state pension will pay. The Welsh are the worst-off, according to Prudential, which found that 25% of people there will be below the poverty line compared to 14% in London. Vince Smith-Hughes, retirement income expert at Prudential, said: "Against a backdrop of rising living costs, the basic state pension alone is not nearly enough to provide a comfortable standard of living. While it's a very valuable source of additional income for millions of pensioners, the state pension should ideally only represent a part of someone's retirement income, not all of it. Many people will now have to work long past their state pension age to maintain any standard of living, according to separate research by pension consultants Hymans Robertson. It found that as employers have axed generous "final salary" schemes, many employees no longer have sufficient savings to be able to afford to retire. In turn this is hitting companies, as they are finding they can't hire younger staff as older staff cannot afford to leave. Poor stock market returns, worsening annuities and improved longevity have combined to make the task of saving enough for retirement a near impossibility for many people. In April, the Office of National Statistics said that the pension fund needed to buy an income of £5,000 year in retirement had risen by 29% in just three years to £152,800. "The vast majority of people simply can't afford to save enough to a defined contribution pension plan to secure retirement at age 65 or earlier," said David Smith, wealth manager at BestInvest. Based upon current annuity rates a 65-year-old male would need a pension pot of roughly £500,000 to generate a pension income of £25,000 per annum gross and this is without allowing for the impact of inflation. When you compound these factors with the increase in state retirement age (67 with effect from 2028), the high cost of buying your own home, the ever increasing costs associated with maintaining a decent standard of living and a lack of growth in wages it is not hard to see why the pension divide is going to grow ever greater.