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Lifestyle is more important for life expectancy than attrition

Published by
August 28, 2020

Early retirement should correct life expectancy inequalities, says the government. But it is smoking and alcohol that are the main problems, according to Danish research.

Should skilled workers get an earlier pension because they live shorter lives?

The government has a recurring argument when justifying its proposal for early retirement, namely that it is unfair that skilled and unskilled workers today live shorter lives than people with longer educations. As Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said last week:

"Shorter life expectancy means fewer years in retirement. This is an injustice that we are in the process of correcting."

Shorter life expectancy of skilled workers may be due to poorer lifestyle

However, Danish research shows that this inequality is mainly due to lifestyle, rather than attrition and hard work.

For example, Knud Juel, Professor Emeritus at the National Institute of Public Health at the University of Southern Denmark, has shown that 60-70% of the difference in life expectancy between the least and most educated is due to smoking and alcohol.

"This is the main explanation for inequality," he says, stressing that working conditions can explain a small part, but so can genes or obesity:

"There may be good reasons to introduce early retirement for those who are worn out. You just have to avoid linking it to life expectancy, because then the arguments will have difficulty reaching each other. For example, if smokers live 10 years less, should they be able to retire 10 years earlier to get the same amount of time on pension?"

Morten Grønbæk, Director of the National Institute of Public Health, notes that "having a hard, one-sided, heavy job can also be significant":

"But the main cause of shorter life expectancy is lifestyle."

Individual assessment of senior pension

The Liberal Party rejects early retirement and would rather give more people access to a senior pension, where people currently have to be assessed individually if their ability to work is less than 15 hours.

"You can't just use life expectancy as the government does. Your life expectancy can of course be related to your work - but you can't ignore people's way of life," says finance spokesman Troels Lund Poulsen (V).

Employment Minister Peter Hummelgaard points out that even when smoking and alcohol are taken into account, there is still a difference in life expectancy between people with short and long education:

Of course, lifestyle has an impact on your life expectancy. But we can also see that it is still determined by your class - to use a word we all understand. It's a structural problem - not just a matter of people bringing it on themselves.

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