Socioeconomic inequalities in survival to retirement age: a register-based analysis

Around the world, people are increasingly living to retirement and old age. This poses a threat to the financing of pension systems. In Denmark, statutory retirement age increases gradually to account for changes in life expectancy. However, the chances of reaching retirement age are not equal across the Danish population, and raising the retirement age could disproportionally affect those of lower socioeconomic status. In this paper, we investigate socioeconomic inequalities in mortality before and within five years of retirement age in Denmark. We use Danish registry data over a 30-year period, focusing on individuals aged 50 to 70. We conduct sex-specific survival analyses across socioeconomic groups using three dimensions of socioeconomic status: education, income, and occupation. We find that the gap in survival inequalities has widened over time between the lowest and highest socioeconomic groups for each measure, caused primarily by little or no mortality improvements in the lowest socioeconomic groups. These results are complemented by lifespan inequality measures, which also show increasing inequalities over time between socioeconomic groups. Individual level variability in socioeconomic characteristics therefore play a crucial role in defining the survival chances just before and shortly after retirement and thus should be considered when designing retirement policies.