Wellfare

Is it right to keep the retirement age at 65?

The world is changing. Like it always did. Over the last century, for every decade, a person's life-expectancy increased by 2 years. That trend is still in effect today, and is especially true in the western World. As important as that, the productive years in a person's life have climbed at even a faster pace - today a 65 year old is not an old man, it's someone active, that can positively contribute to the World in which he lives for still a significant number of years.

Is it right to take these persons out of the work force at such an early age:
- unjustly burdening their labour years?;
- burdening the shrinking younger work force?;
- condemning them to adapt to a new daily situation (retirement is a shocking process) most don't know how to handle?;
- taking experience and expertise out of the economy?

Everytime I think of myself as an old person I think of an active man. I hope to be healthy enough to keep working, to still take part in orienteering meetings (I will rule the veterans races!!!), to be a volunteer actively participating in shaping what I believe to be a better World. That is my dream (together with grandchildren and sons, a loving wife, quality of life...). I hope I make it.

But, to raise the retirement age, to extend the active years for the general population (and to fullfill my dream), a number of points must be taken into consideration:
- continuous education is and will be necessary to ensure adaptation to an ever changing World. When I am 70 I can't be looking at some new technology the way my grandparents looked at cell phones. Constant adaptation will be needed to ensure competitiveness through new skills learning and competences development;
- health education. The western world's generation that will be 60's and 70's by 2050 must learn how to fight its biggest enemy to health and activity - obesity and 'stillness'. We must all need to learn how to take a better care of ourselves through active choices in our current (and the next 30 years') daily life. Things like choosing to do a bit of exercise every morning or afternoon (even if a 30 minutes stroll, that can make such a big difference in our mood). Choosing the right diet - not depriving ourselves of what we like, of our teeth-sweetners, but to know when to eat them and not make them our regular choices. Things like choosing the stairs for that "2-storyes-up" meeting.
- health systems improvement. It is common sense to think that an older population will need better health care systems to keep active. We need to work on that from now on.
- mobility. In some cities around the World an experiment is taking place - volunteers and policemen are being asked to move through these cities (and remember that in 2050 there will be a lot more persons living in cities than in rural areas) with weights on their legs, dirty glasses, uncomfortable shoes. The aim? To understand how the older persons cope with cities that were (really) not made for them - with traffic lights that don't let them time to cross a street, uneven sidewalks, ...
- how can the family support its older members? Despite what some people might think, I am a family person - I think there is nothing more important than the people we love because they are our parents, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, wives and husbands. Whatever its composition (divorces, same-sexs relationships, non-religious marriages,... - it doesn't matter, that is just a form, not the important look you should give to family). In a complex World, where distances have become so much different than in the past, in which aging will necessarily be different, it will be important to know how to keep the bonding and support, without the burden.

If we want to collect on the seniors experience, to balance wellfare, to keep a well balanced aging process, these are our challenges. Retirement at 65 will not happen in the nearby future, but we must pave the way now for a successful extension of our working years.