Reckoning With Retirement Age Realities

The Prime Minister of Mongolia announced last week that the Government of Mongolia is raising the retirement age in accordance with international standards. However, there is no global standard" for the best age for retirement.

Each country has its own standard based on its society and demographics, and these may vary greatly. To prove this, let me show you some historic and modern statistics concerning retirement ages and life expectancies, both in Mongolia and across the globe.

France has the lowest retirement age at 52. The retirement age in China is 50 to 55. Norway has the highest age at 67. In terms of the retirement age for men, in Sri Lanka it is 55, which is the lowest one overall. But Finland's is 62 to 68 and Norway is 67. The overall average is 63.0 for men and 61.1 for women.

According to statistics from National Statistics Office of Mongolia, the average Mongolian life expectancy was 62.77 in 1992. In 2000, the life expectancy was 63.2, with 60.4 for men and 66.1 for women. But by 2015, it had risen slightly to 69.89 (66.02 for men and 75.84 for women).

You can see that, on average, Mongolian women live nine years longer than Mongolian men.As we can see from these statistics, in the last 15 years, the average life expectancy for Mongolians has only increased by 6.

69 years. Most importantly, for men, it only increased by 5.

62 years. According to the requirements of the proposed IMF bailout package, the government is required to raise the retirement age for women to 65 and to 66 years for men starting in 2035. If we imagine that Mongolian life expectancy will continue to rise at the same rate as it has over the last 15 years, in 20 years, the life expectancy for a Mongolian man could increase by another 7.

5 years. Based on this calculation, starting in 2035, it looks like Mongolian men will, on average, only receive pension payments for seven to eight years.

An increased life expectancy for Mongolians can be expected based on the experiences of other countries. For example, Japan has the highest life expectancy in the world, 80.41 for men and 86.87 for women.

Between 1960 and 2015, the life expectancy of the Japanese population rose by 17.7 years. Between the 1950s and the 1960s, the life expectancy in Japan increased by 6.

9 years. Over the next 40 years, life expectancy rose by 10.8 years.

Over 50 years, 39 percent of the increase took place in the first 10 years of that timeframe. Some research suggests that this growth in...