One in four people in the workforce over the age of 50 don’t believe they will ever retire – but it’s evenly split whether they’re working for love or money, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
A nationally representative survey of 2830 Australians aged over 50 found financial insecurity was a key reason; 36 percent of those who don’t expect to retire rated their finances below five out of 10.
However, the same proportion of people rated their finances 7 or more, suggesting that not wanting to retire is not purely a financial decision.
Stella Avramopoulos, chief executive of female-focused charity Good Shepherd, told the SMH that older women were likely to be among those wanting to work for financial reasons.
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Women’s superannuation balances were on average 40 percent lower than men because of structural inequalities, older women were the fastest growing group of homeless people and women had borne the brunt of job losses during the pandemic, she said.
“We need to ensure retirement isn’t a pipedream for younger women by working towards super parity,” Ms Avramopoulos told the SMH.
The study was conducted by Newgate Research for the COTA Federation (Councils on the Ageing) and an overview of findings will be published in the State of the (Older) Nation 2021 report.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald.
