(02 November 2015) – According to several recent studies, EU Member States face different challenges in promoting simultaneously longer working lives and adequate incomes once retired.
There are multiple reasons for such a situation. They relate in particular to the skills situation of older workers and to demographic factors, but also to the design of pension systems and of policies promoting longer working lives.
It should also be noted that the poverty situation of people aged 65 and more also reflects the work histories of older cohorts and how they are accounted for in current pension systems (in particular for women).
Both the situations of countries with relatively high employment ratio and relatively inadequate income for retired (e.g. Sweden and Estonia), and Member States where pensioners seem well protected against poverty in comparison to the rest of the population, but where older workers’ labour market participation is much lower than the working age population (e.g. Hungary and Luxembourg) are not ideal models.