Denmark has raised its retirement age to 70 for everyone born after 1970, becoming the first European country to reach the symbolic threshold.
While other nations are bogged down in seemingly intractable political battles over increasing the state pension age, the Danes are following a long-established principle that it should go up broadly in line with life expectancy. The average for Danes is 81.7 years. The legislation was passed with an overwhelming majority in the Danish parliament.
However, there is a good deal of public unease at the plan to oblige many people to keep working until the end of their seventh decade. Some MPs look aghast at projections that the retirement age could rise as high as 77.
Even Mette Frederiksen, the Social Democratic prime minister, has questioned how much longer the increases can reasonably be sustained.
At 67, Denmark’s state pension age is already among the highest in the world, alongside Norway, Italy, Iceland and a handful of other countries.
Trade unions and some left-wing parties have criticised the plan to raise it by another three years.
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The response from voters has been mixed. Tommas Jensen, a 47-year-old roofer in Aalborg, told the public broadcaster Danmarks Radio that the reform was “unrealistic and unreasonable”, particularly for manual labourers whose work took a heavy toll on their bodies. “We work and work and work, but we can’t keep going,” he said.
Mette Frederiksen, the Social Democratic prime minister
THOMAS TRAASDAHL/EPA
However, surveys showed that more than half of Danes would like to keep working past the standard state pension age. There is a tendency for those in their sixties to phase themselves into retirement over several years by gradually reducing their working hours.
The basis for the change was laid down with a sweeping welfare reform package in 2006. Following warnings from senior economists that the public finances were in danger of collapsing if the state pensions bill continued to grow quickly, the centre-right coalition government and the main opposition parties struck a grand bargain to adjust the retirement age to match demographic trends once every five years.
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There is, however, some griping at the preferential treatment the politicians receive on their own parliamentary pensions. Frederiksen, 47, and 26 other MPs who were elected before 2007 are entitled to retire at the age of 60.
Frederik Vad, the pensions spokesman for Frederiksen’s Social Democratic party, said on public television: “I can understand that people are frustrated about this. I think it should have been reformed a long time ago.”
