Where Do People Spend the Longest Time in Retirement?

French citizens are currently the people spending the most time in retirement out of all OECD countries. French women spent an average of 26.9 years in retirement, while men were retirees for 22.7 years in 2018 (latest available).

Residents of France are currently fighting to not find themselves further down the list in coming years: After long negotiations with the government, the French commission for pension reform proposed to postpone the standard retirement age from 62 to 64 years starting in 2025 in July, but ever since then fierce protests and the longest continuous transport strike in French history have attempted to stop just that.

Other OECD countries’ citizens are likely to spend substantially less less time in retirement than the French. Germany, for example, started in 2012 to raise its standard retirement age incrementally from 65 to 67 years, a process that will conclude in 2029.

Other OECD nations with long retirements were Spain and Italy, where women retired for 26.6 and 25.7 years, respectively. South Koreans were among the worst off with an average about 16 years for women and 13 years for men. The only OECD country with a shorter retirement span was Mexico, where men retired for an even shorter period of time.

The calculation of retirement duration was based on the average retirement age and life expectancy at the time of exiting the labor market for each of the countries studied.