Retirement age to fall due to drop in life expectancy caused by covid

  • Lusa
  • 30 May 2022

On average life expectancy confirms a three-month fall in the legal retirement age in 2023 compared with 2022, to 66 years and four months.

Data published on Monday by the national statistics institute, INE, on average life expectancy confirms a three-month fall in the legal retirement age in 2023 compared with 2022, to 66 years and four months.

According to the final data published today, the average life expectancy at 65 years of age, in the last three-year period, registered a drop of 0.35 points, to 19.35 years, due to the mortality associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.

This indicator serves to calculate the retirement age as well as the cut to be applied to some early pensions by the sustainability factor, which is 14.06% in 2022, both having already been published in a government decree in December, based on provisional data from INE.

The legal retirement age has been rising for several years, associated with average life expectancy (which has been increasing) and this year it is 66 years and seven months.

In turn, the sustainability factor, also associated with average life expectancy, fell from 15.5% in 2021 to 14.06% in 2022.

In recent years, the sustainability factor is no longer applied in some situations, as is the case of people who retire before the legal age, but with long contribution periods.

In addition to the sustainability factor, early retirements are also subject to a 0.5% cut in pension for each month of advance retirement in relation to the legal retirement age or in relation to personal age.

According to data published today by INE for the three-year period 2019-2021, life expectancy at birth in Portugal has fallen to 80.72 years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In releasing the Mortality Tables, INE noted that life expectancy at birth is higher for women (83.37 years) than for men (77.67 years).

“These values represent, relative to 2018-2020, a decrease of about 4.8 months for men and 3.6 months for women, as a result of the increase in the number of deaths in the context of the Covid-19 disease pandemic,” reads the Institute’s information accompanying the data.

According to INE, during a decade there was an increase of 14 months for the total population (14.4 months for men and 11.3 months for women).

While for women the increase resulted mainly from the reduction in mortality at ages 60 and over, for men the increase continued to result mainly from the reduction in mortality at ages under 60.

INE also analysed life expectancy at 65, which also decreased, to 19.35 years for the total population: “At 65, men could expect to live 17.38 years and women 20.80 years, which corresponded to a reduction of, respectively, 4.6 and 3.7 months compared to 2018-2020.

Over the past 10 years, life expectancy at age 65 has increased by 5.5 months for men and 7.2 months for women.

For the period 2019-2021, 36.1 per cent of male live births and 57.3 per cent of female live births were estimated to survive to the age of 85 “if subject throughout their lives to the age-specific mortality conditions observed in this period,” according to INE.

In 2018-2020, these figures were 38.3% for men and 59.1% for women.