Raising the female state pension age to 66.... fair or foul?

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

The proposal on the table is 65 by 2018 and 66 by 2020.

I am lucky, older than DH and retiring at 66 while he needs to carry on to 67. It gets him back for the micky taking over the years!

It's high time pension ages are equalised for men and women. Overdue even. I don't even feel sorry for women in their mid 50s, since I am one. So I'll have to work an extra year in 12 year's time. It doesn't take a lot of preparation.

I agree there should be more transition. I'm 54. I've worked all my life towards a retirement age of 60 but just when I was getting to the stage of planning my leisure time it has gone up to 62, 65 and now 66! When will it end! I think those of us in our 50s have definitely got the short straw!

The rise (for females) to 65, and the timescale for it, was enacted some time ago.

The rise (for both sexes) to 66 (2024) was legislated for in the 2007 Pensions Act, as were further increases to 67 (2034), and 68 (2044).

So the raising of the State Pension age has been a done deal for some years now.

All that is proposed to change is the timings.

The tiny problem is that there aren't enough jobs now, so where are all these extra (skilled, experienced = expensive) people going to work?

I feel that the female pension age should have been raised years ago. Women want equality of the sexes, but only when it suits them. Why should men work more years than women? I don't understand why the governant is waiting to 2018 to end this sexism. Women need to pull their weight.

I think that employers need to be more imaginative and encouraged to employ part timers more. We need people to work part time while at uni (in a proper job) and maybe for people to work part time in their sixties.

My own mother in her 50's started work in her 40's so a bit longer in the trenches won't kill her not like most women of her generation went back to work after having children in their late teens or early twenties.

Not unlike - sorry

Sorry what I went was she didn't go back to work after having children, neither did any of my aunties it just wasn't the done thing was it ?

Someone suggested that instead of having a fixed retirement age, you should receive your pension after 45 years' work (with adjustments for career breaks etc). This would mean that a manual worker who started work at 16 would retire at 61 and someone who graduated at 21 or 22 would retire at 66 or 67. This would be fair because average life expectancy is so much lower in some jobs so average number of years after retirement would end up the same. Not sure what I think of that.

However if, as Cogito suggests, your later working years could be part-time/flexible, it would be OK to retire later - but it's a big if. In any case, older people don't want to burden the younger generations with their care.

But what about the situation of older people sitting in well-paid jobs that they can no longer do as well as they did, and blocking younger people's prospects of moving up the career ladder? Not only that, but having a colleague or manager who is unable (for whatever reason) to do their job often makes things so much more difficult for everyone else.

Finally, I think the government will bring in a law to make us all take out compulsory insurance policies against our care when we are old. It would be a back-door way of introducing health insurance for everyone, just like motor insurance. Watch this space ...

Mellowfruitfulness, people often change careers. Some graduate jobs can be pretty physical. For example working in a special school with autistic teenagers requires quite a high level of physical fitness as well as a degree.

I have a collegue who is 82 years old. She does 12 hours a week and she is amazing. Not everyone declines with age. Working keeps the brain active.

reallytired: it was raised on the early/mid 90s. It was - like all pensions changes - given a long lead time. It was a Tory Government which decided this, and set the timetable. The Labour Government passed the 2007 Pensions Act which left the rising to 65 where it was, and added the further rises to 66, 67 and 68. So there's all party support for the upward trend - and only very minor differences in implementation.

As you can see, lead times are important to people: the proposal to move the change to 66 forward by 2 years (20-22, instead of 22-24) has caused a great deal of protest (much of which seems to be based on lack of notice).

True, Reallytired. It's difficult to see a one-size-fits-all solution here.

dollius - I never understand the arguement that 54 year old women are being given precious little time to prepare. All that is happening is they are being asked to work 2 years longer. What preparation do they need? They will work longer and need a pension for fewer years so have longer to save for a shorter retirement.

On iPM (Radio4) a listener drew attention to the fact that among her husband's colleagues, dustmen, not one LIVED to retire at 65. In dirty jobs retirement should be 60 years so people actually get some retirement.

My neighbour said retirement is spending the first ten years wishing you were twenty and the second ten years wishing you were dead!

A long life is not necessarily a great one in the last few years. As an earlier poster said, a person in good physical health but with senile dementia can live for years.

What SHOULD happen is that the more older people are in work, the more disposable income they have, creating more jobs which affects all ages.

Tiny example: My mother works. She's always going off and having her hair done and gel nails etc, which if she was on a little pension, wouldn't happen. So by working later in life she's creating employment. Win-win.

PS I think retirement can be a poisoned chalice anyway. Too much leisure can be difficult unless you are very good at structuring your own life. A job gives you a status, whatever it is - you instantly lose that. People flounder in retirement and even get depression.

Totally fair. I see it as a combination of people living longer and also changing lifestyles. I started working properly in a pensionable job relatively late and fully expect to be working then. My children may also need some financial support from us as we had kids relatively late too. This is certainly true for a friend of mine who had her children with an older husband when she was forty. What scares me much more than raising the retirement age is that as I understand UK employment law today they can sack you at retirement age with no compensation. Terrifying, terrifying if you needed the money. This is what I really would like them to address.

Mellowfruitfullness - performance issues on the job need to be addressed for what they are, w/o an age related spin put on it. At what age is 'too old' thereby 'blocking' someone younger's career prospects? Hornet's nest that. In the City in some jobs it might be about 35. Also, these arguments are often used against women. (But this is another thread!)

It is then rising to 68 in the following 20 years.

Government spending on pensions consititutes an enormous amount of money and a huge percentage of annual govt spending (including the cost of tax reliefs). It is simply not sustainable in the current format. The current retirement ages were implemented when average life expectancy was at or around the same level - it was not originally anticipated that people could spend 30 plus years in receipt of a pension. The pension system therefore needs to be changed to reflect this and to make it sustainable.

Changing demographics also require change. State pensions are funded on a "pay-as-you-go" basis - that is the NI contributions of the current workforce are meeting the pension costs of the current pensioners - there is no reserve fund. At the moment, the ratio of workers to pensions is lightly under 3:1. However, over the next 50 years this ratio could drop to 1:1 if retirement ages do not rise - so each worker would have to support and pay for one pensioner. That simply will not work.

It is right to raise the pension age.

Men and women should be allowed to retire at the same age.

Those babyboomers really have done very well for themselves. Given that, and the phenominal amount of money that they have made out of property, should also have to work a few more years too.

in favour although I am guessing by the time I retire it will be nearer 75!

I expect I'll pretty much half dead by the time it comes to me drawing any pension, so it does piss me off a bit that I contribute so much for the people at pension age now to have 20 years plus of paid for leisure time.

In Nordic countries when many people retire later employment rates are high so it backs up the theory, the longer you work, the more you spend and the more jobs it creates.