DENMARK - Women in Denmark are much more likely to retire early than men, according to a study carried out for pensions provider PFA Pension.

As many as 46% of women aged between 34 and 54 said they wanted to retire before they were 65, while only 35% of men of the same age group gave that response. The data was collected for PFA by market research firm Capacent Epinion.

The difference between the sexes is due to the tendency in the country for married women to stop work when their husbands do, a report in Denmark's Politiken newspaper cited experts as saying.

"In the future too, women can be expected to retire very many years earlier than men," professor Per Jensen of Aalborg University was quoted as saying. "Women retiring at the same time as their husbands is a peculiarly Danish tendency. You don't see this in Norway, Sweden and Finland," he said.

The age at which working people expected to retire also varied depending on whether they were employed in the private or public sector, the research showed. In the public sector, 54% of employees saw themselves stopping work before they were 65, whereas in the private sector, only 43% expected to retire early.

The difference between planned retirement timetables between the public and private sectors can be explained by the fact that the public sector workforce is largely female, whereas the reverse is the case in Denmark's private sector, according to the Politiken report.