Official and Actual Retirement Ages Around the World

Here’s a condensed version of today’s Daily Chart from The Economist in which it is made clear that certain countries with budget troubles seem to have been overly generous in recent decades in lowering the retirement age as life expectancy has increased.

Not surprisingly, Japan and Germany are the only two countries with substantive increases in the official retirement age between 1970 and 2010 while the U.S. has the highest at what appears to be age 63. Also not surprisingly, Greek has the earliest official retirement age, but the French actually retire earlier, closely followed by those living in Italy and Spain.