Figures 1 and 2 shows a sharp increase in the average effective retirement age for men and women in both Australia and New Zealand between 1970 and 1990. After that, retirement ages for men in both countries stabilised for about a decade. effective retirement age than Australia.
Figure 1: average effective retirement age for men, Australia and New Zealand, 1970 – 2012, (five-year average)
Source: OECD Pensions at a Glance.
Interestingly, in the 1970s and 1980s, New Zealand had an old-age pension scheme, known as New Zealand Superannuation, whose eligibility age was lowered from 65 to 60 in one shot in 1975. This old-age pension in New Zealand had no income test or assets test, but there was for a time a small surcharge on any income of pensioners. Nonetheless, New Zealand had a higher effective retirement age than in Australia where the old-age pension eligibility age is 65 with strict income and assets tests.
Figure 2: average effective retirement age for women, Australia and New Zealand, 1970 – 2012, (five-year average)
Source: OECD Pensions at a Glance.
Figure 1 and figure 2 also shows that the sharp increase in effective retirement ages in New Zealand for both men and women after the eligibility age for New Zealand’s old-age pension was increased from 60 to 65 over 10 years.
Figures 1 and 2 also show the gradual increase in effective retirement ages for Australian men and women from the end of the 1990s.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments