Amid a renewed political debate in Denmark around rises in the state pension age, the country’s pensions lobby has published research suggesting just over half of today’s young adults do expect to work until the official retirement age or beyond.
Insurance & Pension Denmark (IPD) said a new poll done for the industry association revealed that 40% of Danish people between the ages of 18-34 said they expected to work until retirement age, and a further 12% said they expected to work past retirement age.
Some 25% of people in that age group, on the other hand, said they believed they would not be able to work that long, IPD said.
Continued increases in the retirement age are currently a hot topic in Danish politics after the Social Democrat party of prime minister Mette Frederiksen declared this summer that this was the last year it would support automatic rises in the official retirement age in line with changes in life expectancy.
If life expectancy indexation were to continue as before, IPD said, then under the current political agreement the 25-year-olds of today would have to retire at the age of 74.
Jan Hansen, IPD’s director of pensions, said: “There is a big political debate about whether we should continue to raise the retirement age, and today’s young people can look forward to working well into their 70s.”
However, a large proportion of young people believed they could work until they reached the official state pension age, he said.
“Our survey shows that although there has been a lot of talk about an increase in the retirement age, today’s young people don’t have a negative view of having to work for many more years,” Hansen said.
He said the poll also revealed a big variation between respondents in the 18-34 age group regarding their expectations of being able to cope with working life.
“It is therefore crucial that we also focus on creating as good a labour market as possible to ensure that fewer people need to retire before the state pension age,” he said.
Denmark’s Liberal party (Venstre) has proposed setting up a ‘working life commission’ to investigate how conditions can be improved for working Danish people, such as increasing flexibility over working hours.
The research cited by IPD was carried out by Epinion among just over 1,000 Danish people aged 18-66 in mid-September 2024.
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