UK 
United States
There are 200,000 more people over the age of 50 who are economically inactive than before the pandemic, according to the Centre for Ageing Better. In 2023 the then-Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt dubbed his fiscal plan a ‘back to work’ Budget. Why are the over-50s driving economic inactivity and how can they be encouraged to return to the coalface once more?
I’ve been attending a lot of fifty year old birthday parties recently – they say it creeps up on you and it really does, but as I look around the room at these occasions and chink glasses with some of my nearest and dearest friends to mark their half a century, I am struck that 50 has slid down the greasy pole of ageing because our life expectancy has catapulted upwards. Just two hundred years ago, life expectancy was just 35 (I would therefore be six feet under at this point and for quite some time too) and here we are in 2024 and it’s more than double, yet despite needing to pay for our longer lives, many in my age bracket are being turned off work.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that life expectancy in the UK in 2020 to 2022 was 78.6 for males and 82.6 years for females – for those 50 year olds that means a ball park 30-ish years to go. The Covid-19 pandemic slightly reduced the outlook for life expectancy, but the overall picture is an upward curve. What this means is that for my fifty year old friends there is a lot of life left to live – we may accurately be described as just tipping the balance above and beyond ‘middle aged’ but not by much – for many of us the thought of not earning is a laughable dream - yet if the reports are to believed something needs to be done.
Is the 30-40 year retirement stretch a pipedream?
This also means that we must work longer because we need to pay for our longevity somehow. The average retirement age is 66, though men typically retire at 63.2 years old on average, while women finish slightly earlier at 62.8. For the new generation just embarking on the workforce that retirement age will potentially increase. People younger that millennials (Gen Z, Gen Alpha) expect to live longer than their parents with living beyond 100 no longer becoming a pipedream infact a further report by the Standford Centre on Longevity delivers similar news. Half of five-year-olds of today can expect to live to 100, but they will spend 60 of those years working. For fifty year olds there’s anything between 12 and 16 years before collecting a brown envelope with a pension pot inside it – if indeed you have been lucky enough to put aside for that eventuality.
