Retirement age changes

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From around the world --

Malaysia:
http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/ne....php?id=433189

LUMUT, Aug 15 (Bernama) -- The Sultan of Perak, Sultan Azlan Shah, said premature retirement among public service officials can lead to human capital brain drain in the country's public service.

He said although the retirement age was raised to 58 in July last year, it was still a young age and constituted a loss to the public sector, especially in areas which needed intellectual inputs from experienced officers such as learning institutions, health and medical services, engineering, architecture and science.

"The retirement age for judges is 66 but the retirement age for the legal service is 58. This is a loss to the Attorney-General's Chambers as experienced prosecutors and legal officers are making their exit.

"Their departure at such a young and productive age is a huge loss to the service as their experience and maturity of minds is still needed by the sector," he said when opening the Malaysian Government Retirees' Association's 22nd Annual Delegates Conference at Wisma Samudera, here.
....


Citing statistics from the Statistics Department, he said, the life expectancy of men in Malaysia is 71.7 years and 76.5 years for women.

That's life expectancy from birth, of course... what about life expectancy from age 62 or something of that nature?
[I see this problem all the time with the retirement age articles. I found a misleading chart showing life expectancy v. median retirement age for men in the U.S. over a fifty year period... and life expectancy was from birth, of course. It might've been helpful to show the life expectancy from that median retirement age, or from a fixed reference age much higher than zero.]

Uganda:
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/12/691127

THE youth have petitioned President Yoweri Museveni to consider reducing the retirement age for civil servants from 60 to 55 years to create more employment opportunities for them.

“The high retirement age at 60 years when life expectancy in Uganda is 40 years is a conspiracy to deny young people upward progress. It should be reduced to 55 so that after retirement, the retirees will engage in private ventures and create more employment,” said the chairperson of the National Youth Council, Joseph Okwakol, at the International Youth Day celebrations at Bombo primary school yesterday.

Reducing the retirement age would create about 15,000 jobs annually for the youth, he said.

If the life expectancy is that low, it could be due to very high childhood mortality, of course....or armed violence [and lowering the retirement age is not going to fix those problems]

India:
http://www.business-standard.com/ind...62-yrs/366841/

The government is actively considering raising the retirement age of all central government employees, including those in the armed forces, from the present 60 to 62 years.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has submitted a report to the prime minister outlining all the pros and cons of the move, including the “cascading effects” on government employment and the huge savings, at least for two years, on account of retirement payouts.
....
If the decision is finally taken, it will only be the third time the government will have raised the retirement age. Jawaharlal Nehru was the first prime minister to have increased the age of superannuation from 55 to 58 following the 1962 war with China. The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government did it a second time in 1998.

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I came across this:
http://www.epi.org/page/-/old/briefi...retirement.pdf

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009...nsions-savings

Over-50s rush to take pensions early before rule-change deadline

Annuities boom follows rise in qualifying age for drawing on retirement savings, reports Neasa MacErlean

* Neasa MacErlean
* The Observer, Sunday 23 August 2009


Over the next few months a boom is expected in the number of people taking their pensions early as they rush to beat a change in the minimum age. Next April, the age at which you can draw on a private pension will rise from 50 to 55, which is likely to prompt many people to try to beat the deadline.

"We've had quite a few asking about it," says Laith Khalaf, pensions analyst at the independent financial adviser Hargreaves Lansdown.

While Legal & General usually sells about 13% of its annuities to under-55s, this year that proportion has grown to 16%, and could rise further if this age group decides to take the plunge before the deadline.

Many pensions savers aged between 50 and 55 who are unaware of the rule change could miss out. According to research last week from the risk and benefits management firm Aon Consulting, only a quarter of UK workers are aware of the new rule.

Drawing a pension so early, however, would be impractical for many. "For most people it is not affordable to start drawing a pension in your fifties," says Khalaf, though the argument for early retirement can be powerful.

"If the amounts are acceptable, there is a good argument for starting [to draw it] sooner rather than later," says Edinburgh-based actuary Ronnie Sloan. There's a widespread assumption annuity rates for fiftysomethings are not great - in fact, they are relatively good. A 50-year-old single woman who doesn't smoke, with £100,000 to spend on an annuity, would get £451 a month on the best flat-rate annuity (from Aegon Scottish Equitable) flagged up on the Financial Services Authority's comparison tables (www.fsa.gov.uk). She would have to live to 69 to get her £100,000 back.

If her 55-year-old sister started a similar annuity, she would get £474 a month, and would have to live to 72 to recover her £100,000. Their 70-year-old sister would get the higher monthly sum of £630 but would have to draw it to the age of 83 to break even.

The attraction of the youngest sister's option is that 25% of a pension fund can usually be taken as a tax-free lump sum. Some people will use that to pay off their mortgage or invest in their business and then try to save as much of the annuity income as possible.
....
People taking these decisions may feel they are gambling with their future. They'd be right: they are being forced to guess what will happen on investment returns, inflation, general mortality rates and their own life expectancy. But some may feel it is worth the risk.

Oh, I bet a lot more than a quarter of over-fifty people will know about this by January.

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Today's theme is calls for increasing retirement age due to workforce shortages of experienced people [so employer-side problems ... obviously, more of a situation with government positions with mandatory retirement ages.]

Canada:

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/Time+d...799/story.html

Lawyers who challenged the age qualification of most deputy Federal Court justices may have thrown a monkey wrench into the workings of the overburdened court, but their action should lead to a modernization of a law that's out of step with today's reality.

The Federal Court was left scrambling last week to reassign some cases and adjourn others scheduled to be heard by several deputy judges who are older than 75, the age at which all superior court justices are required to retire under provisions of the Constitutional Act. However, the Federal Courts Act allows for any superior, county or district court judge to be appointed as a deputy, without mentioning any age limit for service, although it says a full fledged superior judge must retire at age 75.
....
As geriatrician Dr. Michael Gordon, who teaches at the University of Toronto, points out, "We trade off our ability to manipulate knowledge with our experience. Obviously, experience goes a long way."

Dr. Gordon suggests the senior court system take a page from the medical profession, which has no age limit for doctors practising but assesses their competency every five years after they reach age 70.

Despite the dream of many people to retire early at age 55 -- a notion eagerly promoted by sellers of various retirement fund products -- the reality is that the mandatory retirement age of 65 that was in place across Canada until recently was established at a time when average life expectancy was about 60.

Ireland:
http://www.sbpost.ie/news/gardai-cal...ase-43906.html

Senior gardaí have told the government to suspend the hiring of any new recruits to the force and increase the retirement age for existing gardaí.

Operational commanders have lobbied the government to curb recruitment, amid claims that the growing wage bill has created a drain on operational resources.

In a series of confidential briefings to the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, and officials from the Department of Finance, the Association of Garda Superintendents (AGS) also said there was an urgent need to raise the retirement age of 60 years, amid concerns over an exodus at senior levels.
....

The AGS has said that, as a result of a decision to extend the retirement age of the force three years ago from 57 to 60, there is now a major exodus of top commanders who had delayed retirement in 2006.

Any dramatic increase in retirements this year would also place a further burden on the Garda budget, which has earmarked €29.9 million for pensions and related costs for 2009.

Okay, the second one does sound like there's a budgetary issue re: pensions, not just a matter of losing experienced employees.

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More UK:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle6811087.ece

Life expectancy increases by 15 minutes every hour. Fit and healthy 65-year-old men can expect to live to 88 and women longer still. By the time a man now starting his career reaches 65, he might expect to live until almost 100.

Both company pension schemes and personal pensions have tumbled in value during the recession. Retiring at 65 or earlier no longer seems realistic for most of us.

The authorities are at last waking up to the problem. In 2006 the Government responded to the Pension Commission’s report by deciding to phase in a state pension age of 68 for both men and women, between 2024 and 2044. Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, who chaired the commission, now wishes that its recommendations had been more radical and David Norgrove, the UK pension regulator, expects the state pension age to end up higher.

Clearly, most of us need to work longer and defer our intended retirements. For this to happen, employers will need to retain staff well beyond 65. The Government has separately been addressing this issue, too.
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The issue for the High Court is whether the default retirement age is appropriate and necessary to meet legitimate social policy aims. At the time it was introduced, ministers claimed that it was justified by employers’ concerns about workforce planning and impact on occupational pensions and other work-related benefits. But the ECJ’s judgment suggests a high justification threshold that cannot be met by “mere generalisations” — an observation that might be creating more than a little nervousness at Government HQ.

If the 65 retirement age ends up being abolished, whether as a result of Heyday or the Government’s review, employers will need to adjust quickly. This would not make operating a retirement age necessarily unlawful — employers would merely need to justify doing so.

[JMO]

"Life expectancy increases by 15 minutes every hour. "

Say what?

[MountainHawk]

Originally Posted by JMO

"Life expectancy increases by 15 minutes every hour. "

Say what?

You don't think life expectancy has been going up at the rate of 2.5 years per decade for the last couple of decades?

[exactuary]

no way

not from any starting age

in usa

but article seems to be uk

still not 2.5

[campbell]

Maybe that quote needs to go into the Media Math thread....

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http://www.expatica.com/nl/news/dutc...age_56074.html

The Netherlands - The leader of the populist Freedom Party, Geert Wilders, says his party will categorically refuse to support raising the retirement age from 65 to 67.

He says the issue is so important that should his party engage in negotiations to form a new cabinet following the next parliamentary elections, it will become a breaking point.

This spring the Dutch cabinet agreed, in principle, to raise the pension age to 67. The Netherlands' largest trade union federation, FNV and the Socialist Party are also opposed to the idea.

Well, yeah, it's going to be a political hot potato, esp. with unions.