Australian women and their counterparts in the US, UK, New Zealand, and Canada face a cruel paradox: their biological advantage – longer lives than their male counterparts – looks increasingly like an economic catastrophe.
Living longer should be cause for celebration. Yet as America’s Chief Elder Officer, Dr Neal K Shah, highlighted in a LinkedIn post this week, 52 per cent of single women in the US who need long-term care will completely run out of money in retirement. Not struggle financially, run out entirely.
In Australia, the catastrophe has already arrived for single older women reliant on the age pension and renting, and for those whose interrupted employment history means inadequate to negligible retirement savings. Those without adult children to step in and help are even worse off.
Drivers Converging Now
The issue is playing out in real time.
Next week, the Australian government’s aged care “reforms” take effect, and the majority of older adults will pay considerably more for basic support and care. That’s set against Anglicare’s annual housing affordability report with terrifying findings for older women and the carers on whom many rely: 0.3 per cent of rentals across Australia are affordable for someone relying on the government’s aged pension, and 0.7 per cent are affordable for anyone earning a full-time minimum wage.
Meanwhile, 59 per cent of Australian women aged 70-74 are already relying on the aged pension. Fully 80 per cent of women aged 85 and older are reliant on. In short, ageing with dignity in one’s own home, as most Australians plan to do, is about to get even more difficult, especially for those who have reached the age when they most need care and housing security.
Longevity: Meet demography, economics and finance
Women’s longevity advantage is substantial. Australian women’s life expectancy at birth is 85.1 years compared to men’s 81.1 years, a four-year gap. Women who reach 65 can expect another 22.7 years versus 20.1 for men. What these averages do not take into consideration is the probability of living to 100 or more once you reach 65. And with that, the probability of outliving our savings.
Some of us will live a lot longer than the average. Like my mother, who lived to 109. She worked 40 years as a teacher; retired for more than 40 years on her pension and benefits; and was able to afford the care she needed as and when she needed it. But times were different then – more people owned their homes outright; benefits from common long-term employment were more generous; and governments had more social support funds to spread around.
Structural inequality creates a perfect storm
Exacerbating the cruel paradox for women is that the gift of longevity can become a financial curse when it intersects with structural inequality. Women retire with superannuation balances 23.4% lower than men on average, with the gap widening dramatically from age 30 onwards. By retirement, women’s median super balance sits 25% below men’s—a difference that means women have less reserves than men as care needs intensify.
It’s brutal. What lies ahead? Women’s (and especially single women who are renters) retirement funds wiped out, leaving them entirely dependent on government and charitable sources of support.
Working While Caring? The Caregiving Trap
The Cost of Not Caring: Working while caring in the era of longevity explains the cruellest irony, how women’s traditional caregiving roles become the mechanism of their own financial destruction. A significant proportion will leave employment or revert to part-time to care for ageing parents because neither their parents nor they can afford to pay for care. In doing so, they sacrifice immediate income and future superannuation contributions, compounding their financial vulnerability in later years.
Just 22 per cent of women feel prepared for retirement compared to 36% of men. They’re right to be concerned. Women are also more likely to retire earlier than planned and with less money —not by choice but due to care responsibilities as well as health issues or workforce discrimination.
Women Leading Australia’s Longevity Response
There is good news, though sometimes it takes an independent, global expert to recognise it. According to Aviva Cox-Wittenberg, a highly respected longevity and gender balance expert and leader, spotted it:
“What makes the Australian longevity movement unique is that it is being driven by women—women redesigning systems that failed their own mothers, and that they know must change for the next generation.
They are building technology, influencing policy, and reshaping how we think about work, age, and contribution. As longevity extends our time on earth, the question becomes: how do we fill it meaningfully, sustainably, and inclusively? Australia has the talent, the data, and the tools. Now it has the leadership.
The only question is whether the rest of the country will listen—and follow these women towards future-proofing society and the economy in a new demographic era.“