In many countries around the world, women enter retirement earlier than men: typically, the difference set is about 5 years. As women already leave work for their pensions, men remain part of the workforce.
As the retirement age grows for everyone, men thereby remain the most affected: with an average male life expectancy of 70,7 years, an average man is going to see about 5,5 years of retirement, as compared to 12,5 years for women that have both lower retirement age and higher life expectancy.
This seems to be a flaw in the concept of pensions, not an indication that retirement age should be increased.
Pensions exist on the assumption that there will always be an increasing number of workers paying into them over time and that the number of workers will never shrink. They also assume that pensions will be taken for n number of years after retirement before the pensioner dies.
All these things are bad assumptions. They’re actually just wishful thinking!
A better system would be something like Social Security but instead of paying out based on how much you put in it would just pay out a universal income no matter how much you worked or how much money you made.
It should be a reward for reaching retirement age: You put in your 40 years or whatever time seems reasonable and from then on you’re guaranteed a minimum income.
Not everyone works. Not everyone pays into the system at all but this is fine! Should mothers who raised the next generation retain zero benefits for their work? Should their benefits be reduced because they gave up work for decades in order to raise children? No, that would be unjust and stupid.
If the rich don’t want to pay into these benefits they can go live somewhere else. That’s fine! It’s not like they’re spending their wealth anyway! If the wealth of the rich only grows that means they’re extracting it from the economy and not contributing!
It’s called a pyramid scheme.