Denmark to raise retirement age to 70
429 comments
·May 25, 2025manmal
8fingerlouie
In Denmark, you also have to have a medical exam to maintain your drivers license after you turn 70, but they have no problem with carpenters running around on roofs until they're 74.
Robotbeat
Part of the reason employees are reticent to hire someone past 50 is before they worry they’ll retire soon, even if they’re mentally and physically in good shape. So increasing the retirement age might actually improve the ability of folks in their 50s to find work.
Not saying this is a great trend, but it’s unavoidable due to the low fertility rate (already a problem everywhere in the developed world and soon to be a problem the world over, as by 2050–before I retire—the global average total fertility rate will have dropped below replacement.).
hn_throwaway_99
I don't buy this at all. I've hired many people in my career, and:
1. I've never had more than a max 2 year time horizon when thinking about a hire.
2. If anything, I've found younger people more likely to job hop than those 40+.
FirmwareBurner
This might not be the case for your hiring principles, but this doesn't reflect the reality and statistics in my European country. People after 50 have a near zero chance of getting hired here as confirmed by the unemployment office.
manmal
We already have 15y to go here, at age 50. That’s WAY longer than the median occupancy.
generic92034
Also, large companies go out of their way to offer early retirement packages to their workforce, often starting even with 55 year old employees. That does not fit the expectation of people working till they are 70. Politics and employer orgs need to talk about that.
tikhonj
Companies that have an average churn of more than 7%—which is most of them—have no place worrying about some 50-year-old retiring.
Not that that stops managers, of course...
gandalfian
Denmark, 6 million wealthy people, 4% economic growth, 1.5% inflation, 2.9% unemployment, national debt of 25% of GDP and budget in surplus. How did it all go so right?
enra
Ozempic & Novo Nordisk contributes something like 2% of the economic growth.
seydor
they were rich before ozempic
glorygut123
If they're raising the retirement age, then it obviously didn't all go so right,
jopsen
I feel we've known this was coming years.. and it won't effect until 2040 -- this gives me confidence in the system.
It's not an unfunded mandate running on deficit spending.
So probably it won't be wiped away by a global monetary crisis that forces us to cut deficit spending and reduce pensions.
wat10000
That depends on what driving it. If it’s because the budget was unsustainable and needs to be cut, that’s bad. If it’s because people are living longer, then it’s just an unfortunate consequence of good things. I suspect it’s the latter.
jampekka
> How did it all go so right?
The highest total tax rate in the world perhaps?
copeharderL
[flagged]
anal_reactor
[flagged]
2thumbsup
Denmark’s immigration policies are not nearly as tough as their reputation nor to credit them as the source of economic prosperity.
Denmark’s economic prosperity comes from investment in free higher education for all, generally healthy lifestyles and the flexicurity-model, which provides a flexible labour market and promotes risk-taking.
spicyusername
What are some examples of sensible immigration policies?
How does the US compare / contrast?
paulddraper
US has highest immigration #s of any country.
Canada is close in some respects.
joelthelion
And yet they all have to work like idiots until they're 70, whether they like it or not.
I feel they could do better than that with all this wealth.
stevesimmons
They don't all have to work to age 70. Anyone can stop working earlier, and fund their own retirement.
joelthelion
That's true. But I'd argue that everyone is better off when most people can chose to retire early, rather than the select few who are smart and disciplined enough to plan an early retirement.
MattPalmer1086
People are living longer. Demographically there are fewer younger people to support them. Something has to give.
joelthelion
On the other hand, productivity has improved tremendously. It's not clear that we actually need everyone working.
skywhopper
Immigration is the answer.
droopyEyelids
They’re not working like idiots, they have universal unionization and lots of time off.
joelthelion
You can have the best working conditions in the world, it still sucks to have to work if you don't want to.
instagib
I would like to point to a topic about extending pilots’ mandatory retirement ages. Most pilots plus or minus retirement age are unable to pass the physical or mental demands of the job, so only 25-30% are able to work and not on short- or long-term disability. Some choose to work privately past retirement age. I don’t have any numbers for pilots who decided to leave, were forced out, or could not pass the training.
Extending the retirement age doesn’t really help the situation much, as you need younger and cheaper pilots to fulfill the roles of pilots who are retiring.
The problem is, becoming a pilot takes a fair amount of time, over $100k in training fees, low pay for a while until fully certified with hours in, a very mobile lifestyle, and now you are subjected to physical as well as mental demands of the job certification standards.
nradov
The broken pilot training pipeline is mainly a US problem. Airlines got spoiled because the military trained thousands of pilots every year for "free", then some would go on to get civilian flying jobs. Now the military is smaller and there aren't enough experienced pilots coming out. But there's nothing preventing airlines from hiring pilot candidates with zero experience and paying them to go through flight training. Some other countries do this and it works fine.
bombcar
There are quite a few highly paid professions where the main purpose of that profession’s union seems to be to prevent there being an adequate supply of the professionals.
reliabilityguy
Like med schools in the US
PieTime
Yup, limit residents and percentage grading ensure that doctors are in short supply. Compare to the extremely streamline jr Doctor programs in the UK.
eqmvii
and law
Calavar
The US docotor shortage is a myth. Wait times are the result of beauracratic nonsense has reduced the efficiency of the existing physician workforce [1, 2].
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26132...
[2] https://hbr.org/2020/03/the-problem-with-u-s-health-care-isn...
mrtksn
Its just like nationality based employment rights(need to be citizens or have a visa/permit to work) but more granular.
It can have its place, i.e. a way to balance bargaining power with the employer. It’s inherently anti meritocratic though.
In some cases it’s not about merit or about limiting supply however. In some cases it’s impractical to test someones work continuously, so instead it becomes honor based. That is, you are expected to go through an elite track and succeed in an exam once and then you are good for life unless you commit fraud or show gross incompetency.
dehrmann
This is a good listen on the topic:
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-professional-licensing-a...
AdrianB1
The cost of training is real. 15 ago a colleague did the training slowly while working for some training companies and it costed him just $42,000 to get ATPL, but you need to take trainings and flight hours and that is most of the cost. There are enough people willing to become airline pilots, but most don't have the money and the cost is not an artificial barrier.
Even the cost of PPL, the lowest license on the path, is around $10,000 while the ultralight (European)/sport pilot (US) is over $6,000. From that you need CPL (commercial), multi-engine, complex aircrafts, instrument rating (bad weather or night) etc., that takes time and money most people cannot afford.
aaomidi
Is that what’s happening here?
agilob
It's happening everywhere, and it's completely intentional.
coldtea
no, but why not waste an opportunity for Reagan-era style anti-union drivel?
lyu07282
Of course, we just aren't doing neoliberalism hard enough yet! Lets get rid of all the unions, that must be the reason everything is falling apart.
dtgm92
This is because of their low birth rate primarily right?
I think the system has failed at this point, when you are expected to work that long.
nine_k
The system has effectively failed most everywhere on the West. The post-WWII generations are numerous and have a long life expectancy, apparently longer than the pension systems planned for. Generations that came after them are less numerous, and, in a way, somehow less prosperous. They cannot pay enough to keep the pension systems afloat.
The Japanese faced this earlier and harder than Europe, with about 30% of their population being past the retirement age. They increased their productivity very significantly, but it's still not enough, and a lot of older folks in Japan keep working well past the retirement age, sometimes even re-hired by the companies from which they had retired.
neom
Do you have a sense of how you see it playing out?
cyberax
It'll keep getting worse, as more and more people concentrate into large cities. And large cities are family-hostile. The birth rate in cities is strongly anti-correlated with the city size. People just don't feel content and happy to have children in dense cities.
Japan is very illustrative in this regard. Young people are forced into unaffordable cities, where they often live in cramped shoebox-sized apartments. While beautiful spacious traditional homes are decaying just 2 hours away by car.
What can help? Promote smaller cities, by focusing on making smaller cities more attractive for employers. This is already happening with the remote work, and it helps: https://eig.org/families-exodus/
How to make smaller cities more attractive? Put a stop to densification of larger cities, and tax (or cap-and-trade) the office space in dense areas.
lancekey
But people are living longer, in better health (I think but didn’t verify with data) and entering the workforce later (due to more secondary schooling).
Setting aside the issues of declining birth rate for a minute, this seems like a reasonable adjustment to the other factors?
bgnn
True but no matter how healthy one is in their 60s and 70s people's health degrade significantly in their 80s. So, you have then 10 year of healthy life after retirement.
There's the flip side if the coin though: old people are healthier in Denmark (vs US for example [1]) due to the social welfare system. Well, that system needs to be funded. With the aging population, the costs are rising but contributions are (relatively) declining. That's why there's a push for higher retirement age. It's either this, or defunding the social welfare programs, or immigration. That last one isn't a viable political option in Denmark at the moment.
[1] https://www.euronews.com/health/2025/02/05/older-people-are-...
dottjt
I think what's happening though is that current generations are taking it easier in a lot of ways as a result of having to work more. For example, avoiding senior promotions into management etc.
mahkeiro
People are living longer (but not really in the US), but the health span is not seeing the same increase unfortunately.
hbarka
The metric of “living longer” isn’t the same as “life expectancy once you reach the age of 65”, for example. In the US, when someone cites a statistic that our average life span decreased, it’s due to the effects of early-life mortality on the mean. If you make it past 65, it’s a different statistic.
mistrial9
there is not one USA with respect to these things.. "all people" did not stop living more than 65 years recently
harimau777
Personally, I'm not sure that they are living in better health in the way that I care about. I.e. my goal is to retire when I'm still healthy enough to do things (i.e. travel). Although they are likely healthier than previous generations, most of the 70 years olds I see still aren't healthy enough to travel.
plusmax1
why wait for travel until you are retired? Retirement should not be "the" goal in life.
I've been traveling for holidays every year since I was 25 for at least 3 weeks every year, loving it so much. First it was backpacking, now it transitioned into a bit more luxury as I got older.
You don't know if you'll be hit by a bus next year, retirement is a silly milestone to focus on.
brewdad
I had a great grandparent live to 102. 3 of my 4 grandparents lived into their late 80s with the oldest passing a month shy of 90. Even my grandparent who smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day lived to 78. For all of them, their last good year was about year 80.
My dad just turned 78 and has really slowed the last 5 years. Longer life says little about quality of life.
vladms
Average healthy life years was 71 years in Denmark (source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthy-life-expectancy-a... ). By looking at the map it varies a lot between countries, and I assume between regions and occupations.
The policy for retirement age is related to when society sees fit to sustain someone that does not work. I think it has more to do with how the society sees the elders and what it can afford than to the goals of specific individuals.
philjohn
It's rising, but much slower than before - and plateaud in the 2010's for a good few years, UK stats - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/uni...
lancekey
So since 1950, lifespan has gone up ~14 years in UK.
Retirement age has not gone up since it was created in 1940s. Not crazy to raise it a little.
Quickly looking at Denmark articles, it seems they’re raising the age to adjust to life expectancy increases as well.
I don’t see this a sign of the system failing.
II2II
It's not that you are expected to work that long. It is a case of not being expected to work longer than that. You are always welcome to retire earlier if you have the financial means to do so. You are also welcome to work longer than that should you have the desire to do so.
Of course, those last two sentences are tongue in cheek.
The real problem is that certain segments of society are not compensated for their labor at a rate that would allow them to retire early, and may even have to work beyond retirement age in order to supplement their stipend. Worse yet, these people often work in sectors that offer few affordances for them to maintain their health into old age and may even push them into living conditions that are detrimental to their health (assuming their job isn't detrimental to their health in the first place).
Ideally, people would be able to retire when they want (within reason). The reality is that some people can retire at a relatively young age while others don't really have that option.
EliRivers
Maybe the system needs a rethink; an expectation that everyone able to will pretty much work their whole lives, but making work much less miserable and time-consuming so that's just fine.
Ha. Total pipedream. It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of our current economic system.
satvikpendem
What system would work?
tossandthrow
It is.
And this is the case in all western countries.
It is just being realized in different ways.
Fundamentalle there are 3 ways to cope
1. reduce pensions
2. Raise taxes
3. Decrease amount of benefit receivers.
Denmark choose number 3
CubsFan1060
Wouldn't the fourth way be via increasing either birth rate or immigration?
telotortium
There's not enough immigrants that actually are of financial benefit to Denmark. Only European immigrants are a large financial benefit throughout their lifespan, and Middle Eastern immigrants are a financial detriment even in their prime working years[0]. That is apart from the cultural effects of having a large portion of your population consist of non-Danish, and especially non-European immigrants, which might have its own detrimental effect on the birth rate.
[0] Figure 2.7 of the Danish Government report "Økonomisk Analyse: Indvandreres nettobidrag til de offentlige finanser i 2018" - https://fm.dk/udgivelser/2021/oktober/oekonomisk-analyse-ind...
SoftTalker
Immigration only works if the immigrants adopt and support the social norms and outcomes that you desire. If the immigrants have no desire to work, pay taxes, and support the elderly then you won't want them.
niemandhier
I can only give you the rundown for Germany, but I guess it’s similar in Denmark:
Basically the state spends to much money on humans in general. A young qualified immigrant might have a less negative impact than a slightly older German person, but both of them will be money sinks in the long run.
Statistically immigrants in Germany are less qualified than the general population, so they’ll have an even more negative impact.
The only valid solution is to reduce the spending per person, both birthrate and immigration will only delay the problem.
Denmark should be in a slightly better position than Germany since their health system is cheaper.
Ray20
No one knows how to increase the birth rate. And all the studies show that immigration increases the budget deficit, not reduces it (at least in that way in which it is being implemented now).
mr_toad
The people who would actually benefit from that the most are the people who are too old to have children and are strongly opposed to immigration.
impossiblefork
Improve the birth rate, yes, but you probably can't do that unless you deal with the resource situation as well.
So you can reduce pensions, improve the situation for the youth, take efforts to get an improved birth rate, making use of the resources lost to pensioners, and then maybe you can raise the pension later on once you realize things are stable.
lostlogin
That’s collecting more taxes, 2, isn’t it?
nicolashahn
Raising the birth rate is extremely difficult and immigration will destroy a country's culture if not managed properly.
For an interesting case study, compare Japan (who refuses to allow mass immigration and is at risk of going extinct) and the UK (who has embraced it and is on the way to becoming Muslim-majority). It'll be interesting to see in 50 years which one has had better outcomes.
hmmokidk
Can also just raise taxes on the super rich
bombcar
A 99.9% wealth tax on US billionaires would cover the annual deficit for about 1.5 years.
The scale of the problem is absolutely mind-blowing.
Ray20
You can, but it won't help. Commie, as always, do not understand the basics of mathematics.
mmooss
That omits the essential fact that economies tend to grow - quite a bit over your lifetime. 2% compounded annual growth over 50 years will result in the economy being 2.7x its starting size.
SpicyLemonZest
Economic growth in the abstract doesn't help much, because a retiree is only on the consumer side of the equation. 2% compounded annual growth over 50 years will result in the average worker consuming a lot more stuff, and they're not going to be happy if they have to throw that all out and embrace a 1970s-era standard of living when they retire.
namdnay
The trap is the worse the imbalance gets, the harder (1) gets electorally
tossandthrow
Number 1 is likely the outcome of passivity - inflation will eat away the value of the pension.
WinstonSmith84
Typically EU countries implement the 3 options together - option 1. btw is meant to make the pension irrelevant. It can't happen from one day to the next, but there is a shift happening where people contribute more and more towards private pension funds. It's easy to see that at some point, there will be the equivalent of the US 401K in Europe.
distances
> It's easy to see that at some point, there will be the equivalent of the US 401K in Europe.
* In some European countries. Many countries, however, have no meaningful avenues whatsoever for tax efficient pension saving. My own "pension fund" is just a regular broker account where I invest after income taxes, and where I have to pay capital gains as usual.
tossandthrow
Denmark does have ratepension, which is exactly that.
People with good private pensions can decide to retire 5 years before they officially retire.
dyauspitr
4. Stop spending 90% of healthcare costs on 5% of chronic problem beneficiaries.
tossandthrow
That is increasing tax.
robaato
No 4 - do like Norway:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...
Ray20
It turns out you won't have a problem funding your pension system if you literally pump out millions of dollars' worth of oil per person.
rad_gruchalski
Not everyone sits on a bazillion tons of natural gas and oil. Also, there are 5.5 million people in Norway. Though, Denmark is almost the same population, they have no bazillion tons of oil and natural gas. See the problem?
CamperBob2
You forgot step -1: Use time machine constructed in step 3.5 to seed nearby oceans with phytoplankton and other organic carbon reservoirs
lostlogin
2 has some options. Increase the number of (young) immigrants. Increase the birthrate (has anywhere managed this?).
tossandthrow
Birthrates are problematic as it usually take 20 to 25 years before they pay taxes. And in that time they require a lot of expenses.
They talk abiut the squeeze, if Birthrates increase too suddenly - workers would both have to pay for the elderly and the kids.
null
spacebanana7
Israel is the only developed country which has a sustained positive fertility rate.
dvfjsdhgfv
> Increase the number of (young) immigrants
Increase the number of (young female) immigrants
grunder_advice
Mormons and Amish have above replacement fertility rates. Millionaires in western countries also have above replacement fertility rates.
To me it seems rather obvious: you need both the will and the means to raise 3+ children.
sgt101
Higher life expectancy more like, the state can't afford for people to spend 20 years unproductive. This is a much less acute issue in the USA and Russia where health is poor and life expectancy low.
satvikpendem
How would you fix it? Note that even Scandinavian nations with very generous healthcare and childcare policies can't raise their rates, it simply seems that as people get wealthier, they have fewer kids, regardless of the status of their country's systems.
jmpetroske
My take is that saying the problem is birth rates is misguided. Surely we have enough labor to provide for the elderly, why can’t our economy be structured to get this labor to the people who need it?
satvikpendem
Do we have enough labor? At least in the US there has been a shortage of elderly care workers. And even if we didn't, what does it mean, concretely, to structure the economy to get the labor to those who mean it?
rors
The first pension was put in place by Bismark as a way to "steal the clothes of the socialists whilst they were bathing". It was seen as the cheapest social benefit because life expectancies were so low. A popular policy delivered at low cost to the state.
That people are living longer is why the system is failing. It's an interesting thought experiment to consider whether any country would introduce a state pension now knowing how much they cost.
pwarner
I'm in the US, but I'd be happy if social security ages were pushed out to 75 or 80 but benefits preserved. I'm saving heavily for retirement, but the biggest challenge is figuring out how long you're going to live. If you have sort of a defined and horizon, it's much easier to calculate.
anonzzzies
Yeah, probably 90 here in the EU is a good cut off. People I know seem to make 80 quite easily, but at 85 it goes down quite a bit and after that even the best seem to be done. For me that's 35 years ago at least but I am planning to not get to 90 and if I do, I won't be interested (or know it) anyway.
deanc
I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m based in the Nordics and my estimated retirement age at the moment (where I can get my state pension) is 67y 4m. Whilst I understand the burden the aging population is having on society (lifespan) it doesn’t seem like there’s much proactive government input into people’s healthspan.
Maybe instead we should try investing in this area (reducing the burden on services) instead of simply trying to reduce the quantity of folks claiming from the state pension pot.
WA
It’s the other way around: a few decades ago people retired only a few years earlier, had 5-10 years of retirement and then died.
Now people live way longer, but the retirement age never got adjusted properly to the new reality. So 15-20 years of retirement is the new normal.
In addition, way fewer young payers for the now old.
deanc
Sure. But is that the society we want to live in. Do we not have ambitions to have people work less, enjoy what little life they have more? I'm not saying this is an economically easy problem to solve, but we focus so much on economics and so little on policies that make people happy.
markvdb
> Do we not have ambitions to have people work less, enjoy what little life they have more?
Isn't that something for the individual to decide, not the collective? Many derive from work a lot of meaning in life. If working is what makes some people happy, it would be nice to not punish people for working until they die.
> I'm not saying this is an economically easy problem to solve, but we focus so much on economics and so little on policies that make people happy.
Absolutely!
tossandthrow
I would love to see a model That supports this.
I think it is possible, but we need to raise (corporate) taxes a lot, and this needs to happen globally, as companies move.
As a star I would love to see global minimum corporate taxes, and then take it from there.
zemvpferreira
No one is preventing you from saving more now and retiring earlier. Why must it be the government’s job?
bossyTeacher
> Do we not have ambitions to have people work less, enjoy what little life they have more
Spend less, save more. Vote for governments that do likewise.
IshKebab
Also the actual pension payments have gone up massively. Almost doubled in the last 30 years in the UK.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/pensioners-incomes-...
kryptoncalm
Building on that, instead of viewing retirement (age) from a cost perspective (i.e. we have x budget and y lifespan, hence retirement age is z), it would be refreshing to see a high-quality and long retirement as starting point, and then figure out how to organize for that. One way would be to reduce burden on services indeed. A low retirement age (for those who want it) is a sign of a wealthy nation and something to strive for.
mrcwinn
As an American, I’m often that countries like Denmark are in fact constantly investing in health and entitlements, and so everyone is healthier and happier. Is that not the case?
bjoli
We have the same problem as every other western country. Sweden has lowered the taxes by about 500 billion SEK (corrected for inflation and population growth) since I was born close to 40 years ago. That is about a third of the annual budget.
How these tax cuts are distributed over the population is... not very evenly. There was even an article yesterday in the NYT (iirc) that warned about wealth accumulation patterns in Sweden.
It is the same neoiberal experiment that the US has had since Reagan, just with some more social democracy.
deanc
In my part of the Nordics (Finland) they are cutting investment and sending people to private institutions. In rural areas private providers have entirely replaced public sector healthcare centers. This is seen as quite controversial across the board.
tossandthrow
Self paid?
SoftTalker
Denmark has a lot of social services, and commensurate taxes to support them. This is reaching a breaking point. You can't get more blood out of a body that has already been drained to near the point of death.
ModernMech
Average lifespan is 81 in Denmark and 78 in USA. During the pandemic, average USA lifespan dropped to 76, while in Denmark it didn't drop below 81. So yes, it seems they are in fact healthier.
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/denmark/usa?sc=...
HDThoreaun
It’s not just about expanding lifespans. The cratering birth rates are a huge reason why societies are going to need people to work until they’re older.
ryan93
Are you really claiming there is some big health issue in the nordic countries suppressing life span?
deanc
No. I am suggesting that governments invest more into ensuring their aging population is healthy instead of draining every bit of life from them by making them work later and later.
zeroCalories
Economically, old people are a burden on society. If you want to have a long and easy retirement for your elderly, you need a growing population, forever. Like a ponzi scheme. The alternative is that you break young people's back by burdening them with providing for the elderly. No amount of redistribution will help a country with poor productivity. 60 was a reasonable retirement age years ago, because most people would be dead soon after retirement, but with people regularly reaching 80+, 70 for retirement seems very reasonable. It wouldn't surprise me if the average gen Z reaches 90+, so maybe they should be working until they're in their 80s.
foobazgt
If you had to pick an age for societal burden, it'd be the average "young" person who isn't making a net-positive contribution until around the age of 25. Most people don't receive a corresponding 25 years of retirement, and the retirement they do receive is a product of contributing to it for 40 years.
But it turns out young people become middle-age people, become old people, and we're all in this together. The real problem is not about how the pie is split across generations, but about the realities of lifespans, economic production, and expenses. If you're responsible for funding the entirety of your retirement, all of this is abundantly clear. When you nationalize retirement, all sorts of budgeting tricks start happening, like "borrowing" to fund other programs, papering shortfalls via population growth, etc. Then you start getting age warfare when the govt has to eventually cut back.
You could dissolve the national retirement plan, but that seems like a bad idea for similar reasons as entirely dissolving national welfare and insurance programs. It will always be the case that some people, need some help, some of the time. I guess in my ideal world, it's reduced to a much smaller safety net, because the government is managing the economy well enough that the populace has the wherewithal to save appropriately, and they are educated enough to do so.
vintermann
> Economically, old people are a burden on society
Only if they are poor. If they're rich, they can continue "producing wealth" from interest and investments even after they're dead.
It's a silly thing to say, of course, but it's built into most people's assumptions who are discussing it.
dainiusse
The best phrase I read by someone. "Retirement is a financial goal - it has nothing to do with age". And this makes huge sense...
futureshock
I’d encourage thinking not just about yourself or your immediate circle when it comes to policy like retirement age. State run pension systems affect nearly everyone, not just the extremely fortunate few who can become financially independent at a younger age. And that is also largely an American phenomenon anyway. Salaries are much lower on average than in Europe and there is far less differential between minimum wage and what senior employees get paid. There’s also not the same culture of investing because European companies don’t have the same performance as the US stock market. Lower yield real estate investment is much more common in many European countries. And with strong social safety nets Europeans are generally less pressured to save a huge nest egg.
So this raising of the retirement age will affect a huge portion of workers and 70 is OLD to be working full time for all but the most relaxed jobs. Most older folks I know have know being dealing with multiple chronic age related illnesses well before 70.
nialv7
well in this context it generally means the age someone starts to receive state pension.
testing22321
And in many countries it defines the age you can withdraw money from your own retirement savings without paying full income tax.
dainiusse
Yes. But the wider meaning is - you are in control
zkmon
While the increase is not too bad, they should invest in having babies instead of making the old people work.
dueltmp_yufsy
Seems the US will have to do this soon. Just very very unpopular. Not sure which party will actually pull the trigger.
mattnewton
My guess - they'll just gut the benefits to anemic levels for everyone slowly rather than some big easy to point to maneuver like this.
energy123
What is the political incentive to do this ever?
mattnewton
My thinking was, cutting taxes via budget reconciliation (which is the only process the currently paralyzed legislature can do) requires some hand waving deference to the notion of being revenue neutral by the Byrd rule, so cuts to social programs or rollbacks of government spending have been increasingly included as a way to get tax cuts. Tax cuts fund your donors who fund your reelection campaign.
But, I just looked it up again for this comment and that same rule says "No changes to social security" in reconciliation. It is specifically called out as forbidden to touch via reconciliation unlike almost every other program. So, maybe you are right, it will just be ignored because it doesn't seem possible to quietly change.
ModernMech
Where is the political incentive not to do this ever? If you reduce spending on social safety nets, you can reduce taxes on the wealthy, and as a bonus the poor die. win/win.
pfisherman
From my uninformed perspective this seem like a rather big and sensible lever toward rebalancing US national finances. The actuarial math must have changed significantly since the inception of the program, no?
tehjoker
There's absolutely no reason to other than to line the pockets of the wealthy.
oldpersonintx2
"Not retiring" in the US will be more dictated by inability to purchase a home than Social Security.
Look at all these people around you in their forties who are still renting. They are basically too late to buy. They will be "forever renters". This means they will have to work until death, as their rents continue to rise when their peers who owned homes took their downsizing premium and lived off of it for a few years.
What's crazy is the number of grown adults who think their 401ks will magically grow to fill the gap.
IndubitableCoil
I hear this sentiment frequently but it doesn't pencil out. Renting an equivalent unit will typically, month-to-month, be cheaper than buying. Of course a significant portion of the monthly mortgage payment goes to principal which increases your net worth, but there are many cases where the money you save monthly by renting will actually exceed the principal you accumulate from your mortgage payment. In fact, there are plenty of helpful calculators to help you figure out what makes the most sense if you don't have a love affair with Excel [1].
You may argue that the the value of the house will appreciate well in a good market, but there is nothing stopping you from taking the money you saved by renting and putting it in an appreciating asset.
[1] https://www.nerdwallet.com/calculator/rent-vs-buy-calculator
dehrmann
The only real financial benefit to home ownership is it enforces savings.
dw_arthur
You can still find plenty of reasonable housing in the US. As for young people on the coasts, yea I don't know how they will own a house within the next 10 years.
jampekka
It's utterly insane that people need to work more and longer as technology increases productivity. A truly dystopian economic system.
In 1930 Keynes projected that by 2000 their grandchildren could work 15 hours per week¹. Now the projection is that we will work more and longer in the future.
And what is this labor supposed to even do? How much of even current work really increases wellbeing?
Graeber's thesis of bullshit jobs becomes increasingly more convincing: work isn't about production, it's about social control².
matsemann
Yes, that's what strikes me as well. Where is the productivity gains going? Why are we still working 40 hour weeks, and possibly even for many more years?
If I remember correctly, Denmark even removed a holiday recently. So work more days a year as well.
That's the problem here. That a few people reap all the benefits of this, while the rest of us toil.
tmnvix
> Where is the productivity gains going?
Debt servicing.
I have no specific figures to back this up, but my assumption is that as we become more productive, more credit is made available, which leads to bigger debts and asset price inflation. Because of the asset price inflation, the debt is not necessarily used for productive purchases but, for example, to pay more for existing things - the obvious one being a home. The productivity gains are therefore claimed by creditors.
It would be interesting to see how well productivity increases and debt growth (esp. private) correlate.
JanisErdmanis
> Where is the productivity gains going?
I wonder what a good answer would be here. Intuitively we are increasing productivity in activities that does not increase social welfare. Take corporate lawyering, marketing as an example.
sorokod
> Where is the productivity gains going?
Reinvested to increase future productivity
lobotomizer
lmao
zemvpferreira
If you wanted to live to a 1930s standard of education, healthcare, food, entertainment, interior decorarion, transportation, savings etc etc you could most definitely do it on very few hours of work. Lots of people associated with homesteading, tiny houses etc do so.
That said I agree we should be further ahead in paving a way to paradise.
jampekka
It's not necessarily about the standard of living, but about production going into the zero or negative sum status consumption. Or as Keynes puts it:
> Now it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable. But they fall into two classes -- those needs which are absolute in the sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior to, our fellows. Needs of the second class, those which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable; for the higher the general level, the higher still are they. But this is not so true of the absolute needs -- a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.
soerxpso
> In 1930 Keynes projected that by 2000 their grandchildren could work 15 hours per week
This projection came true. You can live with a 1930s living standard while working 15 hours per week at a median wage. However, nobody wants to live at a 1930s living standard. It turns out that in aggregate people prefer to spend productivity gains on conveniences and higher standards of living than on working fewer hours.
tmnvix
> This projection came true. You can live with a 1930s living standard while working 15 hours per week at a median wage.
Maybe not if you want to own a home. Asset price inflation is real. If you already own a home, sure.
joelthelion
> How much of even current work really increases wellbeing?
If you think about it, there are fewer and fewer jobs that are genuinely useful.
I know it's a difficult topic, but I can't shake the feeling that we need some sort of government intervention in order to reorient the economy towards activities that actually benefit us.
alexey-salmin
It's not insane if you consider that people neglect to raise the next generation to fund their retirement. Fund in the real sense: by doing work and ceding part of the yield to people who retired from work but keep consuming.
Whatever people save for retirement, cash or stocks or points, it only facilitates the said exchange, it doesn't somehow replace or alleviate it. It only works if the next generation exists and is prosperous enough to share their income.
bossyTeacher
> It's utterly insane that people need to work more and longer as technology increases productivity.
Productivity gains are kept by the owners of the institutions as profits that made that productivity possible. Do you think YOU will work less once LLM tech is deployed at scale? Of course not, your company will pay you the same and expect the same work. Every company out there will do the same. They will reap the productivity gains.
mc32
It’s not insane. People are living longer than before, unfortunately when initially set up, people didn’t take increasing longevity into account as well as lower fertility rates. Quite a few people never got to retirement when initially instituted. Where is money supposed to come from? Historically, in multigenerational households of yore elders were productive till they could no more.
nicce
People live longer but the threshold is still the same when the age reduces your physical and mental capability to the same level.
luckylion
> In 1930 Keynes projected that by 2000 their grandchildren could work 15 hours per week.
Couldn't they, having the same standard of living as in 1930?
JadoJodo
Without discarding the issue of the moving goalpost, I do wonder what the quality of life contrast looks like between a 70-year old in 2025 and a 70-year old in 1925. Note: I arbitrarily picked the latter date, as I wasn't able to (with a quick search) locate the year in which the original retirement age was established in Denmark.
I also wonder what it would look like for the government to encourage (or even facilitate) "jobs for seniors" that only become available to you after you turn 60. They could be jobs that are, by design, low-risk, low-physicality, but medium-high mental stimulation.
mistrial9
around 1900 more than a quarter of the population of Denmark emigrated to the USA IIR
strange_aeons
Around 140k emigrated to USA in 1900-1930 (https://danishvoices.ku.dk/danish-in-north-america/)
Denmark’s population was 2.4m-3.5m in that period (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Denmark)
mistrial9
my sources : "a History of the Lutheran Church in America", and a personal history written at that time. If your records are accurate and unbiased, I would accept that answer completely and admit it.. but I am not convinced both of those are true. It is interesting and more clarity is welcome. Also your estimate of the population varies by 40% so the accuracy is in question.
null
dsign
There is an obvious solution to the problem of ageing population and declining birth rates. Furthermore, it's a solution everybody's secret soul wants very much: keep people younger for longer. Invent rejuvenation. But politicians would never dare go in front of cameras and say that they will put a dollar into R&D for such an outcome, because the wall of insults and disdain we would hurl, for no rational reason, at them, would be higher than a tsunami. There is something seriously broken in our collective psyche.
waldrews
And while we're at it, can we do teleportation too? Think of all the parking hassles, the car accidents, the carbon emissions we could save! And yet, just try to convince those funding agencies...
portpecos
You're equating teleportation...something that violates our current understanding of physics..with rejuvenation, which does have some promising peripheral research, such as studies on telomeres.
capitalsigma
I'm pretty sure that "lack of market opportunity" isn't the reason that nobody has yet managed to invent eternal youth
2thumbsup
There are tons of companies researching methods to increase life expectancy and rejuvenation. There is not much controversial about it yet.
It is not that it is hard because it is a controversial subject. It is hard because it is not one problem. To develop rejuvenation you would need to tackle hundreds of very difficult problems, both physiological and neurological, which individually, would represent solutions to critical conditions today (diabetes, dementia, ataxia, arthritis, many types of cancers etc etc).
fasthands9
>Invent rejuvenation
I definitely don't think we have succeeded in "invented" this, but it surely has happened slowly over time. People in theirs 60s today are surely sharper than they used to be, with less chronic physical ailments.
But the end results is people living longer, and the solution still ends up being pushing back the retirement age.
jopsen
> keep people younger for longer.
Is a lot easier than "rejuvenation", and a lot more attainable. And also something we do throw R&D money at.
martin-t
It might be the obvious solution but is it the right one?
People are significantly more productive than say 50 years ago due to technological advancement. So where is all the money going?
I am no economist but it is my understanding that all this extra money goes to the rich because they've entrenched themselves in positions where they can extract a portion of a person's income with no recourse.
It's not normal that a single person can legally own tens of apartments and get a third or each tenant's salary without providing any value to society. It's not normal that companies can own residential properties, they have no use for them other than extracting money from people.
I recall danluu blogging about how multiple times he made code fixes that saved the company more than his salary just in electricity. What I see is an incredible technical achievement but also I see how he's being exploited - the money saved is value he directly provided to society, yet he sees none of it. Where does it go? To people who are already rich.
crop_rotation
> People are significantly more productive than say 50 years ago due to technological advancement. So where is all the money going?
People have far better lives considering all the things available to them compared to 50 years ago. Most people would not want to live life like how people lived it 50 years ago.
> It's not normal that a single person can legally own tens of apartments and get a third or each tenant's salary without providing any value to society. It's not normal that companies can own residential properties, they have no use for them other than extracting money from people.
This is definitely a problem but I don't think the only one.
Tade0
Plenty of people would want to live life how people lived before 2008 though, or even 2015.
Over the past decade life expectancy in developed countries first plateaued, then declined.
Yes, largely due to the pandemic, but that plateau was also the beginning of decline in some places.
martin-t
> This is definitely a problem but I don't think the only one.
Certainly. Planned obsolescence and devices being impossible (or illegal) to repair is another. If a device costs 20% less but lasts only half a long, buyers are losing money because the profits go to the rich more often.
Food has ingredients and an expiration date on the packaging as required by law. Expected lifespan should be required for petty much everything.
charlieyu1
You only get paid because someone pays you. More outputs do not mean you will get paid more if everyone does so
croes
The obvious solution that also worked in the past is rising productivity and participation on the created wealth.
firesteelrain
This is a global trend in order to keep pension and retirement systems fiscally stable. Same reason you will probably see the Social Security System raise their age too.
Where I live, people have issues getting hired past age 50, and it’s near impossible past age 60. It’s a stroke of luck if you score a job then. So yes they can raise retirement age, but that will just create misery for all those who can’t cling to a job long enough. There‘s got to be a better way.