We have all got a problem! Everybody needs income, particularly when there is more time to spend it - and there is more time now! People have increasing expectations and as result of advances in technology and medicine, one of the expectations that has grown is the expectation of life.
In parallel, increased technology has caused redundancy. Occupations have changed, and people find themselves “old and cold” by their mid-fifties. By contrast, at the other end of the scale, there are plenty of young adults across the world who have very little prospect of employment at the current time. We have a further problem, therefore, as to how to provide for the period of middle to late life, given that so many people may be out of work from time to time and retirement may be imposed and not planned for.
I think that you ought to realise that, although life expectancy across Europe has gone up by 10%, in fact, the time spent in retirement has more than doubled. It used to be the case in England and Wales that a man of 65 left employment, “came up from the pit”, lived for seven years and then dropped dead! Now such a man has every prospect of living well into his eighties, and therefore we have got a considerable longer period of non income generation to be saved for. The flipside of longevity is extra cost!
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