Paul Kedrosky of Infectious Greed provides a table of the average retirement age for a number of countries and posits:
I would love to be able to peek into 2020 and see what the following chart looks like then, but I will posit one general guess: Every solvent country will average age 70 or over.Below is a chart showing details of the table in blue, along with the average life expectancy for each country (interesting that there does not seem to be a strong relationship between retirement age and average life expectancy).
I can't say that Paul will be wrong (he very likely is right), but I think there is a "better" (in my opinion) alternative. Rather than work longer, why not "require" less goods / services and enjoy free time more?
In other words, why not become more French?
"Because French schools are good across the country, the French family doesn't have to worry as much about getting its children into a good school district."
ReplyDeleteThis was taken from the article of paul krugman you're refering to. I don't think he has ever been to paris suburbs...
Btw about retirement, Sarkozy is reforming it right now because the system is becoming very dangerously insolvent.
Really?.... France? That must be a joke. PK is a DB.
ReplyDeletenot exactly french, but the idea that life is more important than work.
ReplyDeletei understand this is coming from the guy who works 70+ hrs / week and in his spare time blogs about the economy / financial markets, but sounds enticing to me...
A focus on life instead of consumption allowed me to retire at 49. It can be done without much fuss.
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