Active and retirement life exptectancy in Finland
Keywords:
pensioners, retirement, life expectancy, FinlandAbstract
The main purpose of the study was to examine how retirement and active life time have changed in relation to the total life expectancy in the Finnish population over the period 1970-1993. The study also aimed at finding out how the ratio between pensioners and the active population w ill evolve, if the general aim of Finnish pension policy, to postpone retirement, is reached. Active and retirement life expectancies were calculated by the prevalence-based Sullivan method. The data consisted of official life tables and joint statistics on the share of pension recipients in the total population of Finland. The central finding was that the increase in life expectancy had almost exclusively lengthened the time spent in retirement. Active life expectancy at birth varied relatively little. Early retirement had increasingly concentrated in the population aged 55-64, while in the middle-aged population, those under 55, active years had increased more than total years of life. Prolonging active life expectancy at birth by one year per decennium from 1990 to 2020 would reduce the increase in the pensioner population by nearly one half compared with the growth projected on the basis of 1990 prevalence rates.
