Bucking trend, Bolivia lowers retirement age to 58

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivia enacted a law yesterday lowering the country’s retirement age to 58, bucking a global trend in which countries push people to work longer to counteract the burden of rising life expectancy on national treasuries.

Critics said the law, which also nationalizes the pension system and generously extends coverage to the poor, is unsustainable.

President Evo Morales, a leftist, signed the bill surrounded by members of the powerful Bolivian workers federation, which helped draft the law. Bolivia’s current retirement age is 65 for men and 60 for women.

The law, which takes effect in a year, also extends pensions to the 3 million people — 60 percent of the working population — who labor in the informal economy, such as street vendors and bus drivers.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2010/12/11/bucking_trend_bolivia_lowers_retirement_age_to_58/

Bolivia Stats

Population: 9,947,418 (July 2010 est.)
Life expectancy at birth: male 64.52 years and female 70.07 years (2010 est.)

Age structure:

0-14 years: 35.5% (male 1,767,310/female 1,701,744)
15-64 years: 60% (male 2,877,605/female 2,992,043)
65 years and over: 4.5% (male 193,196/female 243,348) (2010 est.)


Clearly there are not many over the age of 65 and this change will help older Bolivians. I think the change makes sense given the demographics of Bolivia but I would not make a blanket comparison in other countries. For example, Kucinich's logic for lowering the retirement age in the US is motivated by unemployment and reducing the size of the workforce, which is not the case in Bolivia.