Should we trade a higher retirement age for shorter workweeks?
Government budgets are being strained by longer retirements and a low worker-to-retiree ratio. It's inevitable that retirement age will increase. But how do we make the change more palatable?
In last week’s Globe & Mail Gen Squeeze’s Paul Kershaw wrote about about the strain caused to government budgets by rising life expectancy and a declining ratio of working-age adults to retirees.
Canada's retirement age of 65 is currently five years lower than where it stood when Ottawa launched Old Age Security (OAS) in 1952, even though average life expectancy has increased 14 years over the same period. Moreover, there are now 3.3 working-age adults to pay for the OAS of every retiree, compared with 6.9 when boomers started working.
Paul proposed the following trade-off: slightly longer work lives for shorter workweeks.
Here are the key takeaways from the article:
Longer retirements and fewer workers to support retirees are important reasons why government budgets are under strain.
If budgets are going to be balanced, it seems inevitable that retirement age will have to be increased.
But accepting a higher retirement age won’t be easy for young Canadians, who are already been faced with numerous unfair setbacks—from unaffordable housing to environmental decline.
The way to make a higher retirement age more palatable to young Canadians is to offer a shorter workweek alongside it: a retirement age of 67 for a 35 hour workweek.
As Paul points out, the typical Canadian employee works 300 hours more each year than the typical German or Danish worker for about the same average income. A shorter workweek would help redress this disparity.
What do you think? Does Paul’s suggestion seem like a worthwhile trade-off? Let us know in the comment below.
Paul’s article, Can I trade a higher retirement age for a four-day workweek? Is excellent!
“Our age of retirement, 65, is currently five years lower than where it stood when Ottawa launched Old Age Security (OAS) in 1952, even though average life expectancy has increased 14 yearsover the same period. It’s time to strengthen our pension system by considering a potential win-win tradeoff: slightly longer work lives for shorter workweeks.” Life expectancy having increased 14 years is a key point that can’t be stressed enough. Our relatively rich old folks have so many means to live longer and longer to extend their lives…using more and more resources. Perspective: When my Dad was in the hospital at age 78 dieing of cancer and getting relatively little time and attention-resources…the doctors and nurses paid so much attention to the 99 year old in the bed next to my Dad. Disturbing my Dad’s peace in his last days. They were all going out of their way to see that he reached 100 the next month…meanwhile my Dad died relatively ignored.
Quality of life-quality of living- quality of working conditions over extending length of life at any cost.
A 4 day working week would increase the quality of working life, making working more years more pleasurable.
Doctors do it, many do it and enjoy it!
Glen Brown