For most employees, retiring at age 60 is desirable. According to a BBC analysis, financial experts and demographic researchers have doubts about the viability of this dream in the modern world.
Retirement is a “difficult undertaking”
Given increasing life expectancy, declining social safety nets and rising costs of living, the traditional retirement age of 65 may no longer be within reach for most people, according to Larry Fink, director executive at the investment firm BlackRock.
In a recent letter sent to the company's investors, Fink warned that “retirement is a much more difficult task than it was 30 years ago” and will be even more difficult 30 years from now. This is mainly because life expectancy around the world has increased from 67 to 73 years and by 2050 one in six people will be 65 years or older.
Retirement age was not adjusted to life expectancy
According to Rebecca Sear, professor of population and health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, “life expectancy in the United Kingdom has increased steadily since the mid-1850s,” but the retirement age has not adjusted. consequently. The discrepancy means that more and more countries are reaching the point where more people leave the workforce than enter it. In Brazil, for example, this should be the case already in 2035, in India in 2048 and in the United States in 2053.
The traditional financial safety net that has allowed people to retire also appears to be increasingly crumbling. Many retirees do not have enough personal savings or none to fall back on. They only live off the legal pension. Furthermore, the BBC notes that traditional generational wealth that provided young people with a financial cushion in old age is increasingly a thing of the past.
Private provision unlikely
In this context, many workers around the world may be forced to work beyond the traditional retirement age of 65. American workers estimate that it takes almost $1.3 million (€1.19 million) per person to secure their retirement savings, according to data from insurance company Northwestern Mutual, an amount that most people They cannot accumulate until they are 60 years old.
There are already huge financial problems among retirees in Germany. A special analysis of federal statistics showed that almost one in two pensioners lives on less than 1,250 euros net. Of these, 5.3 million are women, corresponding to 53.5 percent of all German pensioners.