To think that constantly increasing retirement age will just cause an increase in health related benefit claims?

All the old nationalised industries had final salary pensions for full time staff. Weekly paid operatives didn’t have anywhere near such a good deal, neither did part time staff. I knew managers from the National Coal Board, and the Gas Board retiring in their late fifties on around 2/3 salaries. That was back in the 1980/90s. Enhanced if redundancy was included, during and after privatisation. I left after 18 years (not all pensionable sadly) at fifty in the mid 90s with a payout, a big help as my next job was lower paid.

A lot of those factory pensions were lost of course in the M&A craze following Blair/Brown's deregulation of the financial markets. It's only in the last 10 years that there's been guaranteed works pensions. And they are far less generous.

I agree with some of what you said that as retirement age increases more people are going to struggle to continue working and sickness benefits will increase.
I don't agree that it's just tradies, retail and hospitality though. Office based, even WFH positions can still be high stress jobs. If you are trying to balance meeting huge pressure at work whilst dealing with health conditions, it can cause anxiety and cognitive difficulties.
I was born in the 70s and we all grew up and knew pensions were important back then. Many positions like factory workers had access to DB pensions unlike most people today. Many chose to bury their head in the sand. We certainly weren’t led to believe the state pension would support us. I remember thinking in my 30s I'll doubt there'll be a state pension when I retire, so I'm actually pleased there will, albeit at a higher age than is ideal. Your private pensions should be helping to bridge the gap between giving up work and getting state pension.
Self-employed have benefited for years from reduced NI and being able to offset a lot of tax. These savings should have been put towards their retirement.

Isn't it more likely to do with having a bare bones healthcare system that only really kicks into action when you're facing potential death? All the other problems that accumulate as one gets older - thyroid, anaemia, arthritis, musculoskeletal disorders, various deficiencies - there's a higher bar to treatment and less of it available in the UK than in other developed countries.

Things is though I’ve saved and if I get sick and can’t work I can’t make any claims? So I feel like you say it will impact on so many people but not sure on the percentage that would even be able to get benefits as at 50+ most people have some assets.

Still not good for healthy life expectancy though! (As someone fast approaching that age)

Ah ok thanks.

It's probably measuring different things. Eg average life expectancy of everyone currently alive versus life expectancy of someone born today. I vaguely recall reading that life expectancy would not continue to rise as it has done over the last 100 years or more. Some theories are on increase in obesity and subsequent health issues, impact of long COVID, but also I guess there must be an ultimate expiry date on the human body, however well looked after.

I totally agree @PyongyangKipperbang

Those are life expectancy for the UK I think. The PP was talking about healthy life expectancy:
Males in the UK could expect to spend 60.7 years (77% of life) in "good" general health, compared with 60.9 years (73%) for females.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/bulletins/healthstatelifeexpectanciesuk/between2011to2013and2022to2024

I have seen this 2 tier idea before, whether it should effectively be based on life expectancy. Would keep the actuaries very busy!

Many of the people I work with use their retired mothers for childcare. If they can't retire, that will have a knock on impact on another generation. Not to mention the amount of elderly folk working voluntarily for charities

I've just looked it up and it says for the UK 79.4 years for males and 83.1 years for females
I don't know where the OP's figures came from.
There will be differences in areas for the UK, but that's an average

Yes I tend to agree. Even with a sedentary job travel etc can be tiring. I wonder if it's an option to sort of phase in state pension, so, for example you could get half of the full amount at 60. So that people could work fewer hours. Probably very difficult to implement but I like the idea

My Father who is 90, was constantly telling his male relatives to join their company pension schemes and not to rely on the state pension.
They all thought he was mad and said it was the governments duty to look after them.
So of course the inevitable happened. My Dad retired at 53, they retired at 65. They are now all dead and my Dad is doing very nicely on his huge pension! Most big companies have offered pensions for a long time. And if not, there were private options. There was tax relief on just about everything in those days, so a lot more could have afforded a little extra to be put aside. You got tax back if you were married, if you had a mortgage, if a child went to uni etc

It's great saying 'priotise your retirement'. What happens when you get cancer at 62 or a stroke at 64? Or the start of dementia? Most private pensions start at 65.

I foresee incapacity benefit going up.

I am not sure how old you are, but it’s actually really hard to get another job in your 60s.
And not every employer will allow you to go part time. It’s a very easy way of trying to get rid of older people.

Also people are being very rigid in their thinking - people tend to slow down towards retirement - maybe cut their hours or move to a lower impact job. You don't have to stay in the same job for 40 years and then suddenly stop.

Due to automatic opt in, most people in the future will have some sort of private pension, although for some it won’t be much. If you are on a low salary and you and your employer only do minimum contributions, you won’t have a lot.

However, I think people will be expected to use this to fund the gap between not being able to work and state pension age. That’s probably why it’s been brought in - so state pension age can be increased but most will have some sort of provision to lean on if they can’t wait that long. Even if that means they’ll have spent a lot of it before they actually get the state pension.

It's interesting that when the pension was first introduced in the UK the age was 70 - when only one in four people reached 70, and those that did had an average life expectancy of 9 years or so - so system was designed to support a small, short-lived group. Even when the age was changed to 60/65 people were expected to spend around 13 years on it - not the 20-25 years now.

You have the option to take pension benefits earlier than 68, you will need to accept a lower annual payment, but you do not need to wait until 68.

I'm 47 and my SPA is 68, DH is 49 and his is 67. We're both teachers and our pensions are tied to state pension age which is something I hope can be reviewed in the future otherwise there will be many future generations being taught by people who don't really want to be there and just waiting our their days - losers all round. One benefit of being a teacher is that we have 6 months full pay sickness, and 6 months half pay. Again though, it'll be future generations who lose out as 1. they will not have permanent teacher and 2. school budgets will be decimated by increased employee costs.

I'm 63, arthritis is an increasing problem but because I'm still mobile I won't be considered for any joint replacements. I've been looking after late DH until recently, but no way will I be fighting my way back into the workforce for the next four years. Luckily I inherit a large chunk of DH's occupational pension, and with having been unable to go anywhere or do anything for some years, there's plenty of money to bridge the gap till I get my state pension. Sister is in a physically demanding job and is taking more and more time off due to poor health.

Are you for real? Not everyone has a private pension or one that could sustain them until they claim state pension. You are deluded ! Agree OP the state pension age should be lowered. There are just not enough jobs to go round especially with machines taking over retail personnel’s jobs.

My Father retired at 53 on a gold plated final salary pension. He will soon be 90.
His company pension has already paid out 37 years and there must be quite a lot like him. He started work at 16, so has now been drawing a pension for the same length of time as he was working!