Parents hand out an average of £7.50 in pocket money to each child every week, according to research by Opinium for Hargreaves Lansdown.

The study found one in 10 parents pay between £10 and £15 a week, while 6 per cent give each child more than that.

How much a child receives tends to rise with age, so that children aged between four and six-years-old get an average of £5.80; those aged seven to 10-years-old typically receive £7.30; 11 to 15-year olds get £9; and those aged 16 and 17 pocket £9.90 a week.

Children in London get the most pocket money (an average of £9.90 a week), followed by Northern Ireland (£8.90) and Wales (£8.20). The lowest weekly amounts were in the East of England (£6) and East Midlands (£5.60).

Girls tend to get more pocket money than boys, with girls receiving an average of £7.80 a week versus £6.90 for boys. However, girls are less likely to get pocket money than boys (35 per cent of girls don’t get it, compared to 25 per cent of boys).

Nearly four in 10 (38 per cent) parents don’t pay pocket money – but buy things whenever their kids ask for them instead.

Sarah Coles, personal finance analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Dick Whittington had the right idea, if kids want to make a fortune in pocket money, they should persuade their parents to move to London – where they’ll rake in the best part of £10 a week.

“Giving pocket money seems like a huge waste of cash – as kids get an average of £7.50 a week to blow on pointless in-game purchases, grim slime-based toys and endless unicorns. You can see why almost two in five parents don’t give their kids pocket money – they just pick up the tab for everything as they go along, so they can veto some of the less sensible purchases.

“The trouble is that it’s not just more expensive to work on a ‘pestering and giving in’ basis, it’s also a missed opportunity to teach kids about money. By making regular small payments, rather than just leaning on you for whatever they want, they learn to prioritise. They hopefully pick up a savings habit, and most of all they get their early mistakes out of the way while the stakes are still very low.”