The 'golden years' after stopping work can look very different depending on where in the world you live and, increasingly, which generation you are in. This is a key message in a New York Times article based on Aegon’s ground-breaking research into longevity and the future of retirement.
In a major article entitled, Why the World Needs to Rethink Retirement, the New York Times amplifies Aegon's message that aging populations and decreasing birth-rates are putting established retirement systems under increasing pressure. The challenge of aging populations is spurring countries around the world to re-assess how retirement works and explore the changes required to extend the pension benefits available today to future generations.
The news article features Aegon's review of the retirement infrastructure in nine of the 15 countries covered by the Retirement Readiness Surveys.
The 2018 edition of the Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey (available in English, Portuguese and Japanese) calls for the forging of a new social contract and proposes a blueprint for retirement in the 21st century. Elements of the blueprint include universal access to a retirement savings system for workers, greater financial literacy and affordable health care.
Also see country reports on Brazil, China, Hungary, Japan and Spain here
Longevity
"When age 65 became the magic retirement number in the US, people didn't live that long," Catherine Collinson, executive director of the Aegon Center of Longevity and Retirement (ACLR) and the non-profit Transamerica Institute, told the New York Times. "Now many people may find themselves living to their 100th birthday. A 30-to-40-year retirement is very different than a 10-to-20-year retirement".
There isn't overwhelming optimism that current pension arrangements — despite differences between countries — will rise to the challenge. The New York Times notes that half of the people surveyed in the 2018 edition of the Retirement Readiness Survey believe future generations would be worse off than people now in retirement, in part because people are living longer. There seems to be no end in sight for the longevity trend, as the United Nations says that the number of people worldwide aged 60 and above is expected to double to 2.1 billion by 2050.