Now this is some draft dodging I can get behind
Or underneath
Textbook example on how to make your country poorer.
Like in the US, the unions can absolutely end up crippling a country. Populism like this never works.
Uruguay Referendum:
Reduce pension age from 65 to 60
Increase minimum pensions
Hit to GDP c5% (likely an under-statement)
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Vote yes to nighttime police raids and no to expanded pensions
I would guess that Russia’s life expectancy has gone down since 2021.
They really should split apart the male/female life expectancy for Russia.
“an European angle”?? I hate them already, and I haven’t even read the article. I can live with someone writing “an historic” (though only if they don’t pronounce their h’s), but that’s just beyond the pale.
The writers are supposedly European themselves.
This seems to be the group to complain to:
Language team
Behind the scenes our language editors meticulously ensure the correctness and clarity of all texts we publish.
Angelos Apallas, Dylan Goodman, Will Peakin, Hannah Salih, Will Sherriff
Great, and now I’ve found their language guide, and I find they generally follow the style guide of the Guardian.
-snort-
man, of all the style guides to choose.
I know this is old, but I’m clearing out old tabs and I wanted to capture the details from this NPR coverage.
Starting next year, China will raise its retirement age for workers, which is now among the youngest in the world’s major economies, in an effort to address its shrinking population and aging work force.
The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, the country’s legislature, passed the new policy Friday after a sudden announcement earlier in the week that it was reviewing the measure, state broadcaster CCTV announced.
The policy change will be carried out over 15 years, with the retirement age for men raised to 63 years, and for women to 55 or 58 years depending on their jobs. The current retirement age is 60 for men and 50 for women in blue-collar jobs and 55 for women doing white-collar work.
“We have more people coming into the retirement age, and so the pension fund is (facing) high pressure. That’s why I think it’s now time to act seriously,” said Xiujian Peng, a senior research fellow at Victoria University in Australia who studies China’s population and its ties to the economy.
The previous retirement ages were set in the 1950’s, when life expectancy was only > around 40 years, Peng said.
The policy will be implemented starting in January, according to the announcement from China’s legislature. The change will take effect progressively based on people’s birthdates.
For example, a man born in January 1971 could retire at the age of 61 years and 7 months in August 2032, according to a chart released along with the policy. A man born in May 1971 could retire at the age of 61 years and 8 months in January 2033.
For Years, Chinese Workers Could Retire at 50. Now, China Can’t Afford It.
Beijing moves to raise retirement age for men to 63 from 60, and for some women to 55 from 50
article inside
China has for years had one of the lowest retirement ages among major economies. Men started life’s next chapter at age 60, while women did so as early as 50.
China’s next generation will have to work for longer.
To address looming pension-system shortfalls and economic strains, Chinese lawmakers on Friday moved to gradually raise the statutory retirement age to 63 for men and 55 for blue-collar women. The retirement age for other women will increase to 58 from 55.
The long-awaited plan will affect most working people in China, but none of it will happen fast.
Over the next 15 years, retirement benchmarks will be delayed a few months each year according to a complicated schedule that varies for different groups. In short, the younger workers are, the longer they will be expected to work.
Chinese officials have long telegraphed that the country needs to raise retirement ages unchanged since the 1950s, but the news nonetheless came as a blow to many Chinese.
Across social-media platforms, middle-aged workers, especially those approaching retirement, expressed confusion and dismay about the plan.
“I’ll just retire now,” one posted on WeChat, China’s do-everything app.
The National People’s Congress, China’s top legislative body, flagged that the change was coming earlier this week but didn’t give details. After the approval of the measure Friday, all state media outlets immediately published tables, charts, illustrations and even an online calculator to help working Chinese people predict when they can retire.
It is rare for an important policy decision to get into so much detail, said Changhao Wei, a fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center of Yale Law School, who saw it as a sign that Chinese leaders expected pushback from the public.
“The authorities were likely determined to push this retirement plan through and were likely aware of the unpopularity of the measure,” said Wei, who has been closely following China’s legislative sessions.
Chinese authorities must also be careful about how the new retirement age might affect the millions of young Chinese having trouble finding work. Youth-unemployment rates hit 17.1% in July.
Chinese officials have long telegraphed that the country needs to raise retirement ages unchanged since the 1950s, but the news nonetheless came as a blow to many Chinese.
Across social-media platforms, middle-aged workers, especially those approaching retirement, expressed confusion and dismay about the plan.
“I’ll just retire now,” one posted on WeChat, China’s do-everything app.
The National People’s Congress, China’s top legislative body, flagged that the change was coming earlier this week but didn’t give details. After the approval of the measure Friday, all state media outlets immediately published tables, charts, illustrations and even an online calculator to help working Chinese people predict when they can retire.
It is rare for an important policy decision to get into so much detail, said Changhao Wei, a fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center of Yale Law School, who saw it as a sign that Chinese leaders expected pushback from the public.
“The authorities were likely determined to push this retirement plan through and were likely aware of the unpopularity of the measure,” said Wei, who has been closely following China’s legislative sessions.
Chinese authorities must also be careful about how the new retirement age might affect the millions of young Chinese having trouble finding work. Youth-unemployment rates hit 17.1% in July.
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Retirement Ages for Men and Women
Where retirement age covers a range, the earliest age is shown. Most are as of 2024.
Does most of the rest of the world have higher mortality for women, and that is why their retirement age is lower? Or is there some other, more cynical reason?
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It may have been that historically these numbers were thumb sucks. When I studied pensions back in the day the UK had a lower female retirement age in the 1940s and pensions as an actuarial field becomes a thing in UK in the 60s after the inflation of the late 50s and early 60s that leads to the triple lock. Other countries just copied UK and used lower numbers than UK if they thought their people lived shorter.
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I’m guessing it’s a holdover from the days when there was a single breadwinner and it was much easier for men to get/hold on to a job than women. Perhaps still like that in some countries.
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A man can’t retire and be left home alone - who’s going to get him lunch? Poor guy might starve. So naturally his wife has to retire before him.
Also they generally assume the wife is younger.
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China’s retirement age reforms not enough to fix pension headache
- China’s one-child policy has exacerbated its aging problem
- Both older and younger workers worried about the changes
- Reforms need to be done urgently before growth slows further
- Fiscal gains likely to be limited initially
…
About one-third of China’s provincial-level jurisdictions are running pension deficits. China’s Academy of Social Sciences has estimated the pension system will run out of money by 2035 without reforms.
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Found the following regarding Poland’s retirement ages, which were first updated to remove gender differences, and then changed to put them back:
Or, you know, the men could share responsibility for raising their children. But that sounds like a hassle.
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Around 2010 the EU court on Human rights ruled that actuarial discrimination (statistical discrimination had been left as an exemption) between the sexes was illegal so you couldn’t use sex as a distinguishing factor when selling insurance and doing pensions. So across the EU most places should have changed the rules to equalise male and female insurance rates, pension ages etc. it was a big thing around the time. It became effective circa 2012 IIRC.
This Polish example is an example of how local values interacts with EU values especially in Eastern Europe where there was some influence of USSR policy. Getting to 2017 before they implemented it was actually resistance.
The United States used to have Social Security start at age 65 for men and 62 for women… because on average wives are (or at least were) 3 years younger than their husbands. They wanted couples to be able to retire together and that was the closest they could come.
I think it was part of the 1982 reform that they made everything the same for men & women, but I could be wrong about the timing.
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just had the discussion last night that for Medicare, I need to work to 68, to have my wife Medicare eligible when I retire