Average age of Finn retiring on old-age pension increases
Written by Natalie Tuck
06/03/18
The average age of a Finnish person retiring on an old-age pension increased by around one month over 2017, to 61.2 years, according to the Finnish Centre for Pensions.
The number of new retirees was 75,000 persons, of whom three out of four retired on an old-age pension. The average effective retirement age has risen by 2.4 years since the beginning of the century. The goal is for the average effective retirement age to be 62.4 years by 2025. To reach that goal, the effective retirement age would have to rise by an ample 10 per cent each year.
The effective retirement age is expected to rise more next year as the effects of the 2017 pension reform will begin to show. As of the beginning of 2018, the retirement age rose by three months. The retirement age will rise by three months per year until 2027, when it is 65 years. After that, the retirement age will be linked to the average expected life expectancy.
Commenting, Finnish Centre for Pensions development manager Jari Kannisto said: “People have been able to retire at 63 for a long time, and it has also been the most popular age for retirement . Now that the retirement age starts to rise, the effective retirement age is also likely to rise.” In 2017, the expected effective retirement age for 25-year-olds was 61.2 years and for 50-year-olds 62.8 years.
The expected effective retirement age depicts the average retirement age if the
However, the statistics also revealed the employment rates of the elderly have risen. Among the 55-59-year-olds, it is already as high as 76 per cent, and among the 60-64-year-olds, roughly 49 per cent. The employment rates in both age groups have risen by 10 percentage points in an ample decade.
“In recent years, the employment rate of individuals aged 60 and above, in particular, has increased briskly. The main underlying factors are the changes made to the unemployment path to retirement and the elimination of many early retirement routes. The employment rate has risen also because part-time working has become more common,” Kannisto added.
