EU: actual retirement age remains well below legal age

In most European union countries, legal retirement age, that is the age when rights to full pension are open, tends to vary between 60 and 65 years old for women and between 62 and 65 for men. However, the actual age to exit the labour market is often well below the legal age. (Ref. 070714)
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Little by little, pension reforms set in motion by member states are being felt : median retirement age for men and women has been increasing in the past few years, as shown by a study made by the European statistics office, Eurostat, published in an issue of Statistics in Focus. The median age of retirement in the EU at 25 increased of almost 10 months for men and a little more than 7 months for women during the 1998-205 period. In 2005, the median age of retirement for women in the EU in 2005

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