Retirement in the 21st century
After years in the workforce, most people look forward to retirement with much eagerness and count down the days until they can relax and finally put their feet up. Retirement is a relatively new concept — when the Australian retirement pension was introduced in 1910 (paid to men from 65 years of age and women from age 60) it wasn't a huge expense to the government because life expectancy was only 55.2 years for men and 58.8 years for women. Most never had the opportunity of accessing the aged pension. However, things have changed considerably and we are all living much longer — on average, men to 80 years and women to 84, therefore many people are likely to have a number of years of retirement ahead of them. Because of this increase in life expectancy and the concern of very high costs to government, current governments have raised the pension age to 67 and wanting to increase it to 70 in Australia — not allowing anyone to access the aged pension ...