Yahoo Finance Canada among top 5 countries to retire
If you’re planning on moving south for your retirement, maybe think again: Canada has officially been identified as one of the best countries in the world to grow old in.
We’re not Sweden, which earned top spot when it comes to older people’s quality of life in this year’s Global AgeWatch Index, developed by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and HelpAge International, an advocacy group for seniors worldwide. However, Canada ranked 5th, after Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands.
The rankings are based on four key categories:
income security (access to a sufficient amount of income and the capacity to use it independently to meet basic needs in older age)
employment and education
health status
“enabling environment” (civic freedom, physical safety, social connections, and access to public transit)
About 5.2 million Canadians are 65 years or older, a number that’s expected to double over the next 25 years, according to Statistics Canada.
Although Canada came out strong in this year’s index, there’s still plenty of room for improvement.
Take pension plans. On the positive side, according to the Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index– which tracks the health of the pension plan industry – Canada’s pension industry was able to meet 94 per cent of member’s promised future income as of this past June versus 76 per cent in 2011.
And although 78 per cent of Canadians over 65 get a pension, that same index ranked Canada 6th worldwide for its state pension scheme, falling behind Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland, and Sweden.
And in that HelpAge index, Canada ranked just 26th in terms of income security. Leading countries on that front are Luxembourg, France, Norway, the Netherlands and Austria.
But what about the debt?
While we’re obviously fortunate not to have the kind of terrible financial woes that burden citizens in countries like Afghanistan (which came in last in the HelpAge study), Tanzania (second last), and Pakistan (third last), the index didn’t take into account things like debt levels.
According to an Equifax Canada report, consumer debt among those aged 65 and over rose by 6.5 per cent in second quarter of 2013 from last year, the biggest year-over-year jump of all age groups.
A CIBC poll released earlier this year found that 59 per cent of retired Canadians say they’re carrying debt. Nineteen per cent of those said that their debt level has increased over the past year, while 36 per cent reported their debt level has stayed the same.
Furthermore, Canadians over the age of 65 have the highest insolvency and bankruptcy rates in the country, according to a report by the Vanier Institute for the Family. The non-profit group’s 2011/12 report found that seniors were 17 times more likely to become insolvent in 2010 than they were 20 years before. During that same period, the insolvency rate for people aged 65 and up increased by a staggering 1,747 per cent.
Our health is top notch
But back to the good news. The HelpAge index ranked Canada second on the health status measure, with Switzerland placing first. Canadians can expect to live in good health for an average of 18.3 years beyond the age of 60, compared to 18.2 years in Sweden.
The aim of the Global AgeWatch Index is ambitious. “The Index is part of a ‘data revolution’ in which age-specific data is used to ensure that policy making is robust and responsive to ageing,” the report states. “The shortage of data on older people may be systematically excluding them from development plans and public policy provision."
