The hope of living.
Pension age, or retirement age, is supposed to be linked to "life expectancy". What can be imagined under a rather general formulation umpire deciding the final stage of every citizen's life? In meaning, it is something uncertain, which may not definitely occur and will only happen with a certain degree of probability. It is about hope, and the word itself suggests that it may or may not. I assume that the basis for such a figure will be a sophisticated mathematical method that excludes all biasing aspects, such as a natural disaster, a pandemic (epidemic), an exodus, or on the contrary, the invention of a drug that extends the life of only a certain group of citizens, etc. But there are many variables and even more side effects. Obviously, it is a shaky topic when the stalwarts of the Czech political scene comment on it. According to demographer Tomáš Fiala of the University of Economics, there is no completely unambiguous definition. "It depends on whether we define health as the absence of a chronic disease or whether we mean the limitation of normal activities. Unlike mortality, health status in a population is assessed only on the basis of a sample survey," he points out. The retirement age and the parameters according to which it is determined are a convenient material for trade union leaders with political ambitions. "The Czech employee works on average eleven years longer than the German employee. This means there is a much greater risk of ill health at an earlier age," points out Josef Středula. The construction of the link between the age at which it is possible to start a pensioner's career without penalty and life expectancy was already established before 2016. However, it was later abolished. Now it is back in full force and with new optics. For the purposes of an urgent, necessary and required overhaul of the pension system, it seems preferable to opt for a healthy life expectancy formulation rather than a lifetime expectancy. It is fairer to the citizens, the subsequent subscribers to the social system. But how to set up an economically realistic relationship between the opposing variables? No one discussing this has addressed this because it is a politically sensitive and probably unrewarding topic.