A lot of young people are angry at what they see as an older generation robbing them of their future by voting to leave the EU. But it’s not the future, it’s now – figures this week reveal just how much of the national pie is being taken by today’s retired people.

In 1994-95 the median net income of the average pensioner was 38% lower than those who were working for a living. In a staggering change, the median income of pensioners is now just 7% less than those in work.

It’s fair to say that a lot of pensioners will have lower spending needs than working people and families. Most will have paid off their mortgages, and the vast majority will no longer be paying out for children. Their commuting costs will have collapsed. Even prescriptions are free. On the flip side, they will be paying more for heating their homes. Arguably, they therefore enjoy a higher standard of living than working people, in many cases significantly so.

Since 2004-05 the average income of all pensioners has jumped from £250 a week to £297. For pensioner couples the average income is £444, or £23,000 a year. During the same period, incomes for working people have stagnated or fallen; even today, average net disposable income is below where it was in 2007-08.

Two factors have driven pensioner incomes up: first, the “triple lock” for state pensions, which has guaranteed that it rises every year by the highest of price inflation, earnings growth or 2.5%. During the global financial crash the triple lock meant pensioners received income rises even when pay for working people was falling. Income from welfare benefits has increased for pensioners since 1994-95, but fallen for working people.

The second factor is that today’s retired are the generation who benefited most from final salary-based pension schemes. The average occupational pension pays £148 a week, and around two-thirds of pensioners receive them.

But are we now at peak pensioner? Those generous final salary pension schemes are in catastrophic decline, now confined almost entirely to the public sector. In the private sector their replacements will only pay a fraction of the amount enjoyed by the generation before them. While many previously picked up two-thirds of their final salary, today’s workers will be lucky to pick up 25%-30% of their former salary. Today’s well-off pensioners are, literally, a dying breed.

This is not an argument to say that today’s pensioners should in any way be stripped of their incomes. There is huge inequality among pensioners themselves. You know all those stories about pensioners saying their incomes have been destroyed by a decade of super-low interest rates? The truth is that the median weekly income from savings in retirement is just £6 a week. The average, though, is £64 a week. That tells you that a small number of pensioners have a large investment income, but the majority have almost nothing.

There is a debate to be had about generational fairness. Britain, like all developed nations, is an ageing country. How do we arrange our national finances so that the elderly are protected, while at the same time the young are not overly burdened paying for it?

The problem is that the reforms suggested so far fall on today’s working generation. For example, the age at which you will qualify for the state pension is rising steeply. That’s an inevitable consequence of improved longevity, but one that will hit people in their late 50s, especially women, hard, not the existing retired.

Another widely mooted reform is to slash pension tax relief, but the losers there are again the existing working population. Should better-off pensioners be expected to pay more as well? Maybe. But as we know from the referendum result, the old vote and the young don’t.