Most people in the U.K. would have been worse off without quantitative easing and interest rate reduction to record low, the Bank of England said in a paper published on Thursday. The asset purchases added over GBP 600 billion wealth to households, equivalent to around GBP 10,000 per person if assets were evenly distributed across the population, it said. Quantitative easing caused the price of gilts to rise and yields to fall, in turn leading to an increase in demand for, and price of, a wide range of other assets. This helped to reduce the borrowing costs of companies and households. The pension fund industry blamed the central bank for the loose monetary policy as pensioners' income diminished with easing. "As far as the impact of QE on pensioners goes, the incomes of those already drawing a pension before QE began will have been unaffected," the bank said. The BoE said the main factor behind increased pension deficits and falls in annuity incomes has not been the Bank's asset purchases, but rather the fall in equity prices relative to government bond prices. Policymaker Martin Weale said cutting interest rate could generate perverse effects, and weaken financial position of certain banks. In an interview in French newspaper, Les Echos, Weale said it is not necessary to raise the size of the asset purchase programme.