This article lists the statutoryretirement age in different countries. In some contexts, the retirement age is the age at which a person is expected or required to cease work and is usually the age at which they may be entitled to receive superannuation or other government benefits, like a state pension. Policy makers usually consider the demography, fiscal cost of ageing, health, life expectancy, nature of profession, supply of labour force etc. while deciding the retirement age. The increase in life expectancy is used in some jurisdictions as an argument to increase the age of retirement in the 21st century.
Many of the countries listed in the table below are in the process of reforming the ages. The ages in the table show when an individual retires if they retire/have retired in the year given in the table; the trend in some countries is that in the future the age will increase gradually, therefore one's year of birth determines when one has the age of retirement. The average of statutory retirement age in the 34 countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2014 was males 65 years and females 63.5 years, but the tendencyall over the world is to increase the retirement age. This is also reflected by the findings that just over half the Asian investors surveyed region-wide said they agreed with raising the retirement age, with a quarter disagreeing and the remainder undecided.
Reform
Reforms tend to be phased-in slowly when the retirement age is increased, with grandfathering ensuring a gradual change. In contrast, when the age of retirement is decreased, changes are often brought about rapidly. One such example of grandfathering are the transitional pension rules which were applied for staff aged 54 years or older, and to some extent for all staff in place, when in 2014 the retirement age of European civil servants was increased to 66 years of age. Men either retire later than women or at the same time. This is being addressed in some countries where the retirement ages are being equalised.
