Retirement age to increase to 70 in Hungary?

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Hungary’s latest survey, Hungarian CEOs think that there will be a very significant increase in the retirement age in Hungary in the coming years. At the same time, domestic CEOs are confident that life expectancy will also increase significantly based on the data that PwC Hungary sent to Portfolio.

Hungarian CEOs are almost certain that the retirement age will rise to 70 by 2030, according to a recent PwC CEO survey. According to their data, 89% of domestic executives believe that the retirement age will increase by 5 years, reaching 70 years by the end of the decade, but they also predict that life expectancy at birth will reach 80 years by 2035.

Not only Hungarian executives but also researchers are of the same view about retirement age. According to an analysis by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Hungarian retirement age will gradually increase to 65 years of age by 2022. OECD suggested that in the future, it would be necessary to link retirement age to life expectancy.

On the other hand, if it were linked to life expectancy, the retirement age would not really have increased in the last few years, as there had been a decline in this respect in Hungary. If you are interested, you can read about the Hungarian opposition, Jobbik’s plan against pension changes. Life expectancy was 76 years in 2018. While life expectancy has increased by an average of 0.24 years per year since 1990, it has averaged 0.1 years since 2014. This was caused by rising mortality rates in some years when the flu epidemic was particularly strong.

Reaching 80 years of life expectancy by 2035 would require a significant improvement over the next few years compared to the trend of the past few. Advances in technology and medicine will allow life expectancy to increase rapidly over the next few years even in Hungary, but for CEOs to be right with their prediction, it would probably require hundreds of billions to be spent on prevention, healthcare – you can read about what the Socialists suggest on this topic –, and education in Hungary, as better living conditions and improvements in the healthcare system all contribute to higher life expectancy.

Source: Portfolio.hu