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Why women and men should retire at the same age, according to science
The state pension age for men and women is currently the same for both, at 66 years of age. Women used to be able to claim their pension earlier, from the age of 60, while men had to wait until 65.
The eligibility age for women was raised in stages until 2020, when it became equal. The pension age has since risen further still, and is due to reach 68 for both sexes by the 2040s.
So-called Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) women say they weren’t given enough warning about the increases, and are campaigning for compensation.
It raises the deeper question about whether men and women should be retiring at the same age at all.
So what can science tell us about how long men and women live and how their health is affected as they age?
Why the state pension ages were different
The disparity in men and women’s ages for qualifying for a state pension had long been in place, partly because it was assumed that women, as the physically weaker sex, would be less capable of working in their 60s.
The equalisation of state pension ages was legislated in the 1990s, for several reasons. The government at the time said it was right because women were increasingly playing an equal role to men in the workplace.
Another push was the need to raise the pension age across the board. The government noted people of both sexes were living longer, and a common pension age of 65 would strike a ‘fair balance between generations’.
Life expectancy has certainly been increasing over the 20th and 21st centuries. Women actually tend to live slightly longer than men, making their earlier pension eligibility seem incongruous.
The average UK life expectancy at birth is currently about 83 for women and 79 for men. “Men used to say [women’s earlier pension age] was unfair and men were discriminated against,” said Baroness Ros Altmann, a Conservative peer and a former pensions minister.
There are several possible reasons for women living longer. It used to be thought it was because men are more likely to smoke and drink.
But this now seems unlikely to be the main explanation, because in many mammal species, females also live longer, suggesting something is going on at the level of basic biology.
A leading theory is that it is due to intrinsic genetic differences between males and females that arise from how sex is determined in embryos.
The science
In mammals, sex is governed by our chromosomes, bundles of DNA inside our cells. Females have two X chromosomes, while males have one X and one Y.
It is the presence of the Y that causes male embryos to start developing testicles in the first few weeks of pregnancy. The X is much larger than the Y and contains about a thousand genes that have crucial functions unrelated to sex determination.
In female embryos, one of the Xs – selected at random in each cell – is switched off in early pregnancy. In every organ of a woman’s body – for example, the liver or kidneys – half of the cells use the X she inherited from her mother and the father’s Y is switched off. While the other half of the cells use the father’s X and the mother’s X is switched off.
This means that the cells in women’s bodies are more diverse – with two options for those one thousand genes on the X – and can respond better to whatever life throws at them, from infections, to environmental toxins, to intrinsic challenges from disease processes.
“In your kidneys, maybe it’s the X from your mother that’s better at giving you long-term kidney function, but in your liver, it’s the X from your dad,” said Dr Sharon Moalem, a geneticist at the US National Institutes of Health. “Every organ is going to be able to choose predominantly one over the other, or to keep both of them active.”
Dr Moalem has written a book making the case that women’s double dose of the X chromosome is the main reason they have higher life expectancy, called The Better Half: On the genetic superiority of Women.
The fact that women die on average four years later than men doesn’t mean they necessarily stay healthier for longer, though. In fact, there is little difference between the sexes here: both women and men in England can expect to stay in good health until they are 62.5 years, according to the Office for National Statistics.
And both men and women will on average remain ‘disability free’ until they are 75.5, defined as being free from any persistent illness that limits day-to-day activities, like washing and dressing.
Where women and men differ – finances
Read Next: Women are still getting less pension than men – and will be for another 25 years
But while men and women seem very similar in their health status at older ages, women do tend to be worse off financially, which could suggest they deserve their state pension earlier.
That’s because they are more likely to have taken time out of work for childcare and to look after parents or other relatives. That can lower their workplace pension pot, and how much state pension they can get, as that is affected by how many years people have been making national insurance contributions.
“They might have gaps in employment, they might have had to go part time, they might have had to stop working earlier to look after a parent,” said Morgan Vine, director of policy and influencing at Independent Age, a charity that campaigns against older people’s poverty.
Many people quit work before the state pension age, relying on savings or their workplace pension in the meantime. Because of their lower lifetime earnings, women are disadvantaged if they aim to do that and so it could be argued they deserve their state pension earlier.
But Altmann does not seek a return to having different state pension ages – as it would seem so unfair to men.
The rules should be the same for both sexes, but there should be some way to let both men and women access their state pension earlier if, for instance, they are terminally ill or completely unable to work, she said. “But I can’t think of any justification in modern society that says women should get it before men.”
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