Retirement age is vexed problem in the developed world; while life expectancy has increased over the last Century, the age where one becomes eligible for the pension has barely changed.
Harvard University professor Martin Feldstein illustrates this in a post on Project Syndicate, Saving Retirement, where he has a number of suggestions of moving the pension age to ease the pressures on public finances.
Obviously, retirees deserve advance notice before benefits are reduced. That is why it is important for the US – and for many countries around the world – to act now to make the changes needed to stabilize future pension finances.
Those pressures are going to become more real in the decade as the baby boomers join the ranks of the retired, the cry “I’ve paid my taxes, where’s my benefits?” is going to get louder.
Unfortunately for them, the kitty’s going to turn out to be bare – there simply aren’t enough Generation X and Y workers in the developed economies to pay for millions of boomers collecting pensions for the next thirty years.
Governments around the world have ignored this obvious, and predictable, problem for fifty years and now it’s time to address it. Unfortunately few leaders have the courage to tell their electorates the truth of the challenge ahead.
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