The legal retirement age will be lowered by three months next year, to 66 years and four months, and will remain at that level in 2024. The fall in average life expectancy due to the pandemic helps explain this behavior.

It is to this conclusion that the information released this Tuesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), which disclosed the average life expectancy of 65 years, allows us to reach it. In the three-year period that ended this year, the indicator stood at 19.3 years, a reduction of 0.5 years with respect to the previous three-year period. This means, according to the calculation formula that includes the average life expectancy, that after a historical setback of three months in 2023, the legal retirement age will remain in 2024.

This is one of the consequences of the reduction in average life expectancy due to mortality caused by the pandemic, not only due to the Covid disease, but also due to indirect factors, such as the postponement of treatments and appointments.

The retirement age ceased to be fixed in 2014, when it was indexed to the average life expectancy at 65 years. Since then she has evolved almost always, now reduced by the pandemic.

Early pensions are cut by 13.83% next year

The INE data also make it possible to calculate the cut due to the sustainability factor —applied to those who request an early pension, outside the special regimes—. This cut will be 13.83%, according to the Observer’s calculations, plus a penalty of 0.5% for each month until the age of majority.

The sustainability factor is the result of the relationship between the average life expectancy at age 65 in the year 2000 (which was 16.63 years) and the average life expectancy before the start of the pension. This indicator has recently changed: this year it was around 14%, after having exceeded 15% in 2021. In 2023 it will fall again to 13.83%.

But there are people who can access special retirement access regimes because they have a long contributory career and, therefore, escape the sustainability factor. Those people who are at least 60 years old complete 40 years of bonus (however, they keep the 0.5% bonus for each month in advance).

Those who have the so-called very long contributory careers do not have any cut for requesting an early pension. People of at least 60 years of age and with 46 years or more of contributions who started working at 16 years of age.