Differences in Survival before Retirement in Denmark: The Role of Living Arrangements and Marital Status

Serena Vigezzi , Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics, University of Southern Denmark
Cosmo Strozza , Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics

As European populations age, governments across the continent have postponed the retirement age to ensure the financial sustainability of pension systems. Some countries, such as Denmark, ultimately aim to link retirement age to the national life expectancy. A unique retirement age, however, disproportionately affects those groups who suffer from greater mortality and changes based on the national average risk exacerbating such inequalities. Living arrangements and marital status are strongly correlated with mortality, especially during mature adulthood, with single individuals, especially men, experiencing much greater mortality levels than other groups. We use Danish registry data and a period and cohort parametric survival analysis with a Gompertz distribution, to examine the risk of dying between ages 50 and 65 (the current retirement age in Denmark is 65.5). As expected, single men living alone have by far the highest mortality. However, the cohort perspective shows that improvements by the most disadvantaged groups are considerably slower than those of other groups. Since pension reforms are also cohort-based, we argue that this perspective offers a more realistic view of their potential impact. We also take into account the dynamic nature of living arrangements and find a non-linear relationship between survival and the number of transitions experienced during the observation period. We plan to expand our contributions by including the presence of children in the analyses and by controlling for SES status. We will also analyse survival shortly after the retirement age, to understand who actually gets to enjoy retirement in Denmark.

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 Presented in Session 29. Current debates around retirement and mortality