Once upon a time, growing old often meant growing poor. As recently as 1976, there were 37% of Canada’s seniors living in poverty.
But that year, the first group of retirees to receive full Canada Pension Plan benefits hit age 65. Other programs such as Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement for low-income seniors started to have an impact. Workplace pensions were strong. And by the 1980s, investments through vehicles such as mutual funds were becoming popular.
As a result, since the 1970s the poverty rate for seniors has been slashed dramatically. By 2010, Statistics Canada says a mere 5% of seniors were living in poverty, once the impact of government benefits was taken into account. Canada’s seniors are far less likely to be poor than those in most other developed countries, and less likely to be low-income than other Canadians.
Canada’s challenge for the 21st century? Ensuring the next generation of retirees enjoy at least as good a standard of living as current golden-agers – while also offering them more opportunities to keep working past retirement age, and keep giving back to a society that needs them.
A little more than a half-century ago, there were eight working-age Canadians for every senior citizen. By 2013, the so-called dependency ratio had fallen to 4.5:1. By the 2050s, this ratio is expected to be only a bit higher than 2:1. The question is whether this older Canada will be a less productive and dynamic country, or a richer country where people not only live longer, but lead fuller lives – lives that include something other than automatically ceasing work at age 65.
This week, Sun Life released what it called its annual "Unretirement" report. It calls unretirement "the growing trend away from early retirement – by choice or economic necessity – and toward continued work past the traditional retirement age of 65." The report’s findings suggest that more Canadians than ever expect to forgo or postpone a traditional retirement. That’s partly a sign of trouble, and partly an opportunity.
Sun Life finds that 32% of working Canadians expect to be employed full-time at age 66, slightly more than the 27% who expect to be fully retired. As recently as 2008, however, fully half of Canadians expected to retire at 66, while a mere 16% were planning on continuing to work full-time.
Canadians are living longer and healthier. And lots of people, especially in white-collar jobs, are as productive as ever in their 60s. They like their work, and their employers rely on them.
But the shift in attitudes the survey documents – in just seven years, the percentage of workers expecting to continue working full-time after retirement age has doubled, while the number planning on retiring at 65 has been halved – is also about hard economic realities.
