Working longer
More governments want to keep workers working
Working Australians are strongly opposed to the government increasing the legal retirement age, according to a recent survey by AXA.
The 2010 AXA Retirement Scope survey found there was significant resistance to the idea of working longer or having the legal age for retirement increased by the state across all 26 countries surveyed.
Yet more and more governments are turning against popular opinion and increasing the qualifying age for the pension as a way to meet the demands of aging populations and struggling economies.
Australia was one of the first countries to announce a change this year when Wayne Swann revealed his plan to lift the qualifying age for the age pension from 65 to 67 by 2023 in the 2010 Budget in May.
However the idea of working longer to ensure a sufficient income in retirement received little traction from Australian workers, with just five per cent considering it an option.
In contrast, more than double the amount of French workers support the state increasing the retirement age, with a respectable 11 per cent considering it a solution.
In September France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the age for a full pension from 65 to 67, was met with such hostility it prompted mass strikes across the nation, lasting more than seven weeks.
Over the Channel, when UK chancellor George Osborne announced a raft of austerity measures in October, they included a gradual increase in the retirement age from 65 to 66 by 2020 – four years earlier than originally planned – even though just eight per cent of UK workers advocated the state increasing the retirement age.
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As at 30th March 2011, AXA Asia Pacific Holdings Limited and all of its Australian and New Zealand subsidiaries ceased to be members of the Global AXA Group and became members of the AMP Group.
