Happy birthday to me. Today I turn 48. I’m celebrating in an age-appropriate way: a trip to the physio for a stiff shoulder, then publishing some gloomy words about pensions. Being born in 1976 makes me part of what marketers called Generation X. Arguably though, the 1965 to 1980 cohort should be tagged the ‘Forgotten Generation’.

We talk and write a lot about generations and their supposed differences, in terms of attitudes and economic experiences. I’ve done my fair share of generation-journalism, but I’m not blind to its failings. I think a lot of those differences are overstated: culturally we all have more in common than the hot tales suggest. And generational commentary often compares the old – baby boomers – and the young – millennials and Gen Z.

If the forecast sounds grim, the reality will very likely be worse. What is an ‘adequate’ pension?

My lot, now aged between 44 and 64, are less noticed. Partly because we’re slightly less numerous (there are around 14 million people in Gen X) and maybe a little because our cultural contribution to Western civilisation is less than impressive: the Cold War raged and ended during our youth, but we didn’t notice because we were watching Knight Rider and listening to Belinda Carlile. (Yes, heaven is a place on earth.)

Nonetheless, we’re overdue some attention from policymakers because, put simply, we’re screwed. Or will be, whenever we try to retire. This is because we’re the people who have been failed by a public policy framework that hasn’t properly responded to one of the biggest changes in postwar British life that no-one noticed or talks about.

That change comes down to one letter: going from DB to DC. This dooms Gen X. DB stands for ‘defined benefit’, a pension where your employer guarantees you a certain amount of retirement income for every year you work. DC is ‘defined contribution’, where you and your employer pay some money into a fund that you will use to support yourself in retirement.

That dry difference is vast. Unlike most of the population, I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about pensions. One thing I’ve concluded is that most the population, and their elected representatives, have not grasped the scale of that difference.

Simply, people with DB pensions know what they’ll get when they retire, because someone else provided for them and will run things to ensure they get what they’re due. People with DC pots don’t have any of that – we’re on our own.

This is not the place for a recap on why DB is fading and being replaced by DC (TLDR: too expensive) and anyway, the causes are less important than the consequences. One of those consequences is that a lot of people of around my age face a bleak old age.

Now, if you’re a well-informed but non-specialist observer of pensions, you might be thinking: but what about auto-enrolment? Haven’t we solved this one by nudging everyone into a pension? Not quite. Auto-enrollment really is great, one of the best bits of public policy change I’ve seen in 25-odd years hanging around Westminster. But it only began in October 2012, when I was 36 and the oldest of Gen X were in their late 40s.

Added to this is the big, awful fact that auto-enrolment contribution rates are too low. That combined with the timeframe I mentioned means that a Gen Xer who got shunted into pension saving for the first time by auto enrolment just won’t be putting aside enough money, or investing it for long enough, to deliver a significant private pension in retirement.

This is the horror facing many of Gen X. We’re too young to have got much, or any DB entitlement – roughly 55 per cent of us have no DB provision, me included. And we’re too young to spend four decades or more accumulating DC savings that can grow into a decent pot. This is why, back in 2022, the International Longevity Centre think-tank calculated that 30 per cent of Generation X – about 4.2 million people – were on track for pension that would mean they fall short of a minimum living standards in later life.

If that forecast sounds grim, the reality will very likely be worse. What is an ‘adequate’ pension? That depends on the life you want to live in retirement.

A lot of pension analysis here uses work by the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA), which researches the public’s expectations and desires around lifestyles in later life. The PLSA’s ‘minimum’ lifestyle in retirement isn’t lavish. It’s based on £50 a week for groceries, one week’s holiday in the UK every year, and no car. For that, you need £14,400 a year. If you happen to get a full state pension of £11,500, you still need another £3,000 a year from a private pension – every year for as long as you live after you stop work.

If you’re relying on a DC pension for that £3,000 a year for life, you might need £70,000 of savings in your pot. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), in 2018-20 the median value of DC pension pots held by older Gen Xers, those aged 50–59, was £33,500.

Note two things about that IFS number. First, it’s a median: half of people have less than that £33,500. Second, it only covers people who do have a DC pot – the ILC reckons 14 per cent of Gen X have no pension of any kind.

This brings me back to that ILC forecast that 30 per cent of Gen X would fall short of the minimum lifestyle in retirement. That forecast almost certainly underestimates the scale of this problem, because it was based on data from 2020. Since then, two things have happened. First, inflation has far exceeded most of the forecasts prevalent at the time. Second, the PLSA has raised that ‘minimum’ income target in retirement, partly because of inflation and partly because of changing public expectations.

The result: things are probably even worse than they looked for a lot of Gen X. Especially if they don’t own property.

Many people of my generation are fortunate enough to have got on the property ladder earlier in life and – notionally – accumulated housing wealth from rising prices. But not all of us. Roughly 35 per cent of people my age are renting. For people born in 1980, that figure is closer to 40 per cent. British public policy is not remotely ready for Generation Rent to hit retirement, and its older members are from my cohort, Generation X.

None of the facts and predictions I’ve set out here are new to anyone who has paid attention to pension policy in recent years, but not many people have done so. That includes most people in politics. It’s very, very easy for politicians to neglect the pension provision of people who won’t retire for another 20 years, because those politicians almost certainly won’t be looking for votes in 20 years.

It’s also hard to avoid the thought that the very, very generous pension provision of MPs themselves makes it harder for them to understand just how very, very badly some voters are prepared for retirement. That goes especially the four or five or six million Gen Xers who will be the first to go into the minefield that is retirement without any DB pension or an adequate DC pot. Nor does society as a whole, including those of us who help shape national conversation via the media and other means, give pensions and retirement enough attention. Especially when it comes to my cohort.

You won’t find many tear-jerking op-eds about the plight of low-income 50-year-olds with inadequate pensions. Especially because the majority of those people are female, and let’s face it, there are few groups with less social and political clout than the middle-aged women who provide most of the unpaid childcare and elderly care on which our society relies. But they are the people who could well be on the sharp end of another big, nasty shift in national experience in the coming decades.

Over the last generation, Britain has seen a significant shift in the allocation of wealth and comfort, and thus in social mores. Once, we fretted about little old ladies afraid to turn the gas fire on because they were so poor. Today, pensioner poverty still exists and should still be addressed, but it’s a smaller problem than it was. So people, me included, can rail about policies and politics that prioritise the interests of asset-rich pensioners over the anxious young.

But the relative comfort of today’s pensions largely rests on DB pensions that won’t be there to support tomorrow’s retirees. Instead, we’ll rely on DC pots that may well not be enough to support many of us. That will leave Britain in the 2040s facing a choice between returning to the age of cold and hungry old folk, or dedicating an even higher share of scarce public resources to my generation in retirement. Neither is ideal.

Can that choice be averted? Maybe. Higher pension contributions, soon, would help. A higher state pension age for me and my peers is probably inevitable too. But both require today’s politicians to make decisions on behalf of tomorrow’s voters, political foresight that is sadly rather rare.

So in the unlikely event that after reading this, you’d like to get me something for my birthday, can I ask for an email to your MP asking them what they’re doing to ensure adequate pensions among Generation X? My parliamentary readers meanwhile – you know who you are – can get in touch in the usual way. And send cake.