Younger people are losing faith in the value of pensions, research by Baring Asset Management has indicated.
A survey by the company found that, among the whole working population, people expected 52% of their retirement income to come from pensions, but this fell to 40% among those now aged between 25 and 44.
Those in even younger age groups seemed less convinced by pensions, with only 35% of the 18-24 bracket expecting to finance most of retirement from a pension.
Other sources of retirement income mentioned by all respondents were cash (12.8%), property (11.2%), ISAs (7.4%) and inheritance (5.2%).
Investment trusts were cited by 2% while 9.3% expected their income to derive from some other source.
The findings, published yesterday, also revealed that 21% of the 1,581 respondents polled did not expect to generate any income from pensions, and only 32% thought more than 80% of their retirement income would come from pensions.
Barings chief investment officer Marino Valensise said the tax benefits of pensions, and the possibility of employer contributions made it 'surprising that people do not expect a higher percentage of their retirement income to come from this source, and also a little alarming that the younger generation seem less convinced by them'.
He added: 'Hopefully the current auto-enrolment programme will help address this.'