like before we wrotethe retirement age was raised on January 1, already being 65 for those born in 1957. This marks the end of a period of raising the retirement age agreed in 2009 that has been in place since 2014. Before inform us Raising the age limit and retirement conditions.
Joseph Banyar emphasized in his writings that raising the retirement age in many countries – Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Sweden and Slovakia – It is not transient and does not target a pre-determined value, but is actually associated with a change in life expectancy. He said this is expected to show a steady upward trend, apart from shocks like 2020. He stated that there are already separate English terms for this: longevity.
Banyar noted that the European Commission has included the retirement age indicator among the proposed “good practices”.
Why do you recommend indexing the retirement age?
With the age limit unchanged, a gradual increase in life expectancy does not lead to an increase in active longevity, but rather the longevity spent in retirement, which, according to Banyar, is unjustified, it is generally very problematic in terms of the pension fund in general .
He notes that life expectancy is increasing as we are getting healthier, so we can work out longer and longer.
According to the assistant professor, this is also shown by measurements that attempt to determine the life expectancy of health. And by the measurements he mentions, this increases in parallel with life expectancy, so the time a patient spends in our lives does not increase.
He added that the work that people do is also gradually changing, with mechanization and even automation leading to a decline in jobs that cause high physical stress and thus quickly “burn out” people.
In addition, the active life expectancy of people from the “other end” is steadily declining with the spread of (often delayed) higher education.
According to Banyar, as a result, people start working later and on average, so raising the retirement age will only be necessary to stabilize the length of an active life.
Then he continues:
For all these reasons, it would be logical to announce that the retirement age, which has now expired, continues to increase, but in such a way that it increases in the future by the same amount as life expectancy. (Since it’s now down due to the pandemic, we have a few years to do so, and hopefully, to reverse the upward trend.)
Various examples
According to Banyar, it is questionable how we account for the increase in life expectancy as the retirement age increases. The German pension expert he mentioned, Axel Borsch-Sopan, recommends that Germany (which has not yet become one of the countries with an automatic indicator of age) divide the increase in life expectancy between active and retirement years. According to Banyar, this means that the retirement age will rise so that the ratio of the two periods remains constant (provided, of course, some fixed or variable “beginner” activity age).
On the other hand, the method chosen in Slovakia is to reform the pensioner’s life expectancy and increase the age limit so that it remains constant, Corvinus points out.
Cover image source: Getty Images