Charles Eugester is a 94-year-old Irish dentist who has been declared by his country’s media as the world’s fittest old age pensioner. He recently spoke in an inaugural Register of Exercise Professionals convention at University College Dublin.
He had some pretty hot advice for those listening to him: “Retirement should be abolished. For me personally, I consider retirement a financial catastrophe and a health disaster. Older people should be working and they would be healthier as a result.”
At the beginning of the last century retirement was a luxury very few people could afford. Old age social services were almost unheard of and people worked until they dropped. When the welfare state system was introduced in most of Europe after the World War II, pension schemes were introduced.
Today, governments and employers are fretting that their pension schemes are either bankrupt of unaffordable. Workers feel cheated. The prospect of retiring when one reaches the mid-sixties has for many become a mirage. Many European politicians keep kicking the can on pensions’ reform because any changes will be unpalatable to the electorate. They come up with some sensible measures, like encouraging more women to join the active workforce.
However, on their own and without more structural reforms, the current pension systems in most EU countries will become unsustainable.
Extending the age when one is allowed to retire is not the silver bullet some economists and policy makers believe it is. David Cameron recently advised pensioners ‘to train as teachers’ as they have plenty of skills and knowledge to share.
A teacher of a top independent boarding school writing in the Daily Telegraph sees little merit in what the British Prime Minister is proposing.
“Teaching is a profession that has its sell-by date and that date is definitely sixty. Any longer and teachers run the risk of being far too doddery and decrepit to cope with the very real physical and mental challenges of teaching teenagers. They would simply run rings round most pensioners,” he wrote.
...without more structural reforms, the current pension systems in most EU countries will become unsustainable
Teaching, like nursing and many other professions, is physically very tiring. How can you expect a 70-year-old nurse to cope with moving patients with limited mobility in and out of their beds or to be accurate when administering injections or intravenous drips?
So how does one reconcile these two very conflicting perceptions of what one needs to do when approaching retirement age? Dr Eugester has a valid point when he claims that: “Work, diet and exercise are the key to longevity”. On the other hand the private boarding school teacher quoted above is equally right when he says: “Frankly, what most politicians forget is that, to teenagers, anyone over the age of 30 seems positively ancient, let alone someone pushing 65.”
I am a believer that the ‘lump of labour’ economic theory is a fallacy. The view that at least, in the short term, there is a fixed demand for labour and that employment can only be increased by job sharing and by reducing the hours worked by the existing labour force, is a short sighted and inaccurate understanding of the dynamics of economic activity. So a pragmatic active aging policy should also include the encouragement of workers who have reached retirement age to continue working if they would like to do so for financial or social reasons.
But labour law amendments on their own are not the solution to the challenge of keeping older workers in the active labour market. The labour market for older workers may need to be liberalised to make it easier for employers to take on more retired workers who want to rejoin the workforce.
Unions are wrong to expect that the employment rights of a 20-year-old should be identical to those of a 65-year-old who wants to continue working. The need for job security, long-term prospects of salary increases to support a family, and the financial commitments of a young person raising a family are very different from those of a 65-year-old who either wants to supplement his pension income or wants to continue working for the social advantages that the work environment gives to many workers.
We need to shift the debate on the future of retirement from one that is defensive and based on the right to retire at a certain age, to one where we discuss how older workers can be helped to remain active and healthy.
johncassarwhite@yahoo.com