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P1As life expectancy climbs ever higher, a growing number of governments are responding by lifting the age at which citizens may draw their pension. Although this trend imposes real hardship on certain workers, I regard it, on balance, as a necessary and broadly positive development.

P2The case for raising the retirement age rests primarily on demographics and economics. People now live far longer than they did when modern pension systems were first designed, so a worker who retires at sixty may draw benefits for thirty years, an arrangement that is simply unaffordable for a shrinking workforce to underwrite. By keeping people in employment a few years longer, governments can preserve the solvency of their pension systems without either slashing benefits or imposing punitive taxes. Continued work can also enrich older people themselves, supplying the income, sense of purpose and social contact that an abrupt retirement sometimes strips away.

P3It would be disingenuous, however, to brush aside the drawbacks. The policy bears down most heavily on those in physically gruelling or poorly paid occupations, for whom an extra few years of toil can be genuinely punishing, and who, through no fault of their own, tend to have shorter lives in any case. There is also a legitimate worry that retaining older workers in post may throttle opportunities for the young entering the labour market.