The influence of retirement age on life expectancy based on analysis of OECD countries

Why Working Longer Matters for Longer Lives

Across the world, people are living longer while birth rates fall, creating rapidly aging societies and mounting pressure on pension and health systems. Many governments are responding by raising the official age at which people can retire with a full pension. This shift often sparks a worried question: will working longer harm people’s health and shorten their lives, or might it actually be harmless—or even helpful? The article explores this issue by comparing dozens of countries to see how the legal retirement age links with how long people live on average.

Growing Older in a Changing World

Global aging is one of the defining social trends of the twenty‑first century. The number of people over 60 is rising quickly, and the group aged 80 and above is growing even faster. At the same time, life expectancy worldwide has climbed into the 70s. This means more years of retirement to finance, and more pressure on public pension funds and health systems, especially in countries with many older citizens and relatively fewer workers. To cope, many members of the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development (OECD) have already raised, or plan to raise, their normal retirement age, sometimes tying it directly to life expectancy so that as people live longer, they also work longer.

Different Views on Retirement and Health

Scientists and policymakers have long debated how leaving work affects health. Some studies find that retirement improves mental well‑being, sleep, and healthy habits like quitting smoking and getting more exercise, helping older adults feel better and live longer. Other research points in the opposite direction, suggesting that early retirement can bring more depression, weight gain, or other health problems, especially when people leave work involuntarily. A third strand of work argues that retirement has little overall effect on health. Most of this prior evidence comes from single countries and follows individuals, making it hard to see broad patterns that hold across different economic and social settings.

Looking Across Countries for Patterns

The authors of this article take a wider view by assembling data from 48 countries between 2005 and 2021, drawing on large international databases maintained by the OECD and the World Bank. They focus on life expectancy at birth, a common summary of population health, and compare it with each country’s legal retirement age for receiving a full public pension. To make a fair comparison, they also account for differences in income, education spending, hospital capacity, death rates, population size and age structure, city living, and birth rates. Using statistical techniques designed for data that vary across both countries and years, they ask whether places with higher retirement ages tend, all else equal, to have longer life expectancies.

What the Numbers Reveal

The analysis shows a clear pattern: countries with higher official retirement ages also tend to have higher life expectancy, even after taking many other factors into account. The positive link remains when the authors use more advanced methods to handle the fact that causation can run both ways—longer lives can encourage governments to raise the retirement age. Interestingly, income per person and public spending on education are not always strongly tied to life expectancy in this sample, likely because their influence operates indirectly through health services and lifestyles, and because many higher‑income countries already enjoy similar levels of these resources. Hospital bed availability, overall death rates, birth rates, and the share of older people all behave as expected in shaping average longevity.

Differences Between Countries and Between Men and Women

When the authors split the sample, they find important differences. In developed countries, raising the legal retirement age does not have a clear, separate effect on life expectancy, perhaps because many already have flexible retirement options and relatively high retirement ages. In developing countries, however, a higher retirement age is strongly associated with longer lives, suggesting that there is still room to extend working life without harming health and possibly while improving living standards. The study also looks at whether men and women retire at the same age. Where they do not—often with women leaving earlier—the legal retirement age shows a particularly strong positive connection to life expectancy, hinting that carefully designed, gender‑aware retirement policies can matter for health outcomes.

What It Means for People and Policy

For everyday workers, the study’s main message is reassuring: raising the official retirement age does not appear to shorten lives on average, and in many settings is linked to longer life expectancy. Combined with other research showing that more years in or near the labor market can support heart health, mental well‑being, and better use of medical care, the findings suggest that a well‑managed delay of retirement can be part of a healthy aging strategy. The authors argue that policymakers should focus on flexible rules that respect differences in job demands, health status, and gender, while also taking advantage of older adults’ desire and ability to keep contributing. Done thoughtfully, later retirement can ease pressure on pension systems, sustain economic growth in aging societies, and still support a long, satisfying life in older age.

Citation: Luo, J., Ma, X. The influence of retirement age on life expectancy based on analysis of OECD countries. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 13, 226 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06498-4

Keywords: retirement age, life expectancy, ageing population, pension policy, OECD countries