Retirement age norms in Nordic countries (Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden) exceed those in most other European countries, research by the Finnish Centre for Pensions (ETK) has found.

While employers’ and employees’ retirement age expectations differ across Europe, they were found to be higher in countries with later statutory retirement ages.

The countries that ranked as having the highest average retirement age norms were Denmark, with employers viewing 54 to be too young to retire and 77 being too old to work, Iceland (ages 56 and 74), Norway (ages 56 and 74) and Sweden (ages 51 and 75).

On average, Finnish employers felt that 70 year olds were too old to work and 54 year olds were too young to retire.

On the other end of the spectrum, Slovakian employers believed that 44 was too young to retire and 64 was too old to work, while France (ages 47 and 63), Bulgaria (ages 49 and 62) and Croatia (ages 48 and 64) were also on the lower end of retirement age norms.

“A country’s statutory retirement age seems to be strongly related to its retirement age norms,” commented ETK senior researcher, Aart-Jan Riekhoff.

“Overall, European employers’ retirement age norms tend to be higher than employees’.

“Employers seem to take a more positive stance than employees on working at increasingly older ages and deferring retirement.

“Policy measures with which working lives are extended at the end of working life may be inefficient if employers are unwilling to employ and retain older employees.”

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