No, Treasurer Joe Hockey’s unlikely to live to a ripe old age of 150. Well, not according to current life expectancy predictions.
However, Hockey has outlined a future where babies born in 2015 could live that long, while declaring Australians should expect and accept less government benefits and having to pay a greater contribution to their personal health costs. Opposition leader Bill Shorten called the comment Hockey’s “Sarah Palin moment”, however neither Shorten or Hockey can really forsee what the year 2165 might have in store.
The future we can and should consider is the one that will have very real consequences for those of us living today. And so far, things are not looking good for retirement.
You see Australians have a bit of a retirement problem, according to a global HSBC Future of Retirement report. We expect to spend 23 years in retirement but have savings to cover just ten of those years. That’s the widest gap of all 15 countries surveyed. Just over 45% of pre-retiring age Australians reported they are unable to adequately save for retirement.
The report finds women in particular don’t have enough retirement savings — which we know from other studies that show a signigicant disparity in the retirement savings of men and women. In 2011-12, the average woman’s superannuation balance was $92,000 less than men – Australian men retire with a superanuation balance of $197,000, compared with $105,000 for women.
The reasons for this occuring are pretty straight-forward: the pay gap, career breaks and long stints of working flexibly and part time all accumulate to see women retiring with significantly less than men.
However, ideas for helping to correct this imblanace are known, yet not seriously being explored.
Policy measures designed to assist women continue, return or enter the workforce seem to treat retirement-savings as an issue that women will simply figure out themselves. Paid parental leave – including our current scheme and that proposed by the Abbott government – does not include provisions to pay superannuation.
The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia even suggests reforming the Anti-Discrimination Act to allow employers to pay female employees more super than their male counterparts.
According to Mercer Consulting, 50% of Austarlian women will live beyond the age of ninety. These are women living now, women who simply not have the savings they need for retirement.
Back to Hockey and those 150-year olds. On current life expectancy trends, any 2015 baby that could potentially make it that long is more than like to be female. She’ll be working well into her 130s.