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Portugal is one of the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) where workers will have to work more than 64 or 65 years to maintain the weight of the population of working age compared to the total population.
According to an OECD study, In 30 years, if nothing changes in the productive and demographic structure, the Portuguese will have to work, on average, another eight years beyond that reference age., which means that the weight of the population in working conditions remains stable, at current levels, if these people in active conditions retire at age 72 or more.
The case of Portugal is especially serious, since the OECD assumes in its calculations that the retirement age is even among the highest of the group of more than 40 economies studied. Portugal has already managed to extend its professional or productive life by five years. It is one of the greatest advances of the OECD, but even so, it is not enough to stabilize the productive system in the next two or three decades.
According to the OECD, looking at demographics alone is not enough. You need to see what panorama In the long run for the economy, look at the productive potential. In this case, says the Paris-based organization, Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita Portuguese is expected to fall 4.9% by 2030, but if we extend the horizon to 2040 or 2050, the average individual impoverishment is even more serious. In a baseline scenario, GDP per capita falls by 11% by 2040 or 15% by 2050.
For many countries (the OECD speaks of Portugal, but also of other problem cases, such as Spain and Korea), the pressure to work more years already in the so-called “old age” is great because “fertility is low”, aging is a an increasingly strong phenomenon (associated with longer life expectancy) and the long-term growth prospects in the economy are downright bad in the eyes of these economists.
Portugal has already managed to extend its professional or productive life by five years. But even then it’s not enough
There are ways to ease this pressure on older people, which, according to the OECD recipe, is to make the economy much more productive or to increase the participation of women in the labor market. But even that may not be enough.
The OECD explains in the new study entitled “Promotion of an active population including age” that “the maximum age limit for working life, taking as a reference 65 years, will have to increase substantially to avoid a decrease in size relative strength “. “in the different countries analyzed.
Portugal lost 134,000 assets in less than a decade
In the case of Portugal, despite the slight recovery in recent years (there was some economic growth), it is clear that the previous crisis (the adjustment crisis) troika and the PSD-CDS government) drastically reduced the number of people in active conditions (able to work, at an age that the OECD defines as 20 to 64 years) to a minimum of 4.883 million people.
According to a survey carried out by DN / Dinheiro Vivo from the database of the National Institute of Statistics (INE), even with the recovery in recent years, Portugal has lost 134,000 people in productive conditions (active) since 2011. That is to say , never recovered from the shock of the previous crisis. And in 2020 another even more aggressive crisis appeared, that of the pandemic, which brutally increased inactivity..
According to the OECD, “nowadays, the working age is generally defined between 20 and 64 years (or between 15 and 64 years)”, but “due to the low fertility and the age of the population, the proportion of that population with ages between 20 and 64 will decrease, while the group of 65 and over will grow, putting pressure on pension systems and the standard of living ”.
The solution, according to the OECD
Solution? “An extension in what is defined as the age group of the main workers in about six years until 2050.” This is the average for the OECD as a whole. In the case of Portugal, as mentioned, the years of additional work (beyond 64 years) to stabilize the productive population are eight years. In the case of Spain, the bar rises to ten years or more above the retirement age.
For the experts of the OECD, this extension of the working age “would capture the real labor contributions of the older adults”.
The organization admits that governments have not been afraid to look at the demographic winter. “The extension of working life is already happening. The effective ages to leave the labor market in the OECD have increased by about 2½ years for men and 3 years for women between 2000 and 2019.” And here Portugal stands out: “Women and men from countries like Estonia, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Portugal have extended their professional lives by more than five years” in those 19 years under analysis, the new study says.
The OECD maintains that this “extension of the working age by six years over the next three decades would clearly exceed life expectancy gains in the same period”, but admits that there are problems that need to be addressed.
“It will take great efforts through public and private policies to encourage workers to extend their professional lives as long as they can, want and need.”
The OECD warns that more “investments are needed in the financial security and health of workers throughout life, as well as in skills and lifelong learning.” It is the only way for “these workers to be resilient into old age,” concludes the organization led by Ángel Gurría, the now historic secretary general, who will be replaced as of June 1 of next year.
Luís Reis Ribeiro is a journalist for Dinheiro Vivo
