New life expectancy figures from Denmark’s statutory pension scheme ATP, out today, paint a picture of both men and women living longer, at the point of retirement, than a year before – with predicted lifespans rising for the second year in a row following the declining life expectancy of the pandemic years.
Publishing its annual life expectancy update, the DKK689bn (€92.3bn) statutory pensions institution said the life expectancy of 67-year-old men in Denmark rose by five months in 2024, while that of women at the same age had increased by 2.6 months.
Camilla Fredsgaard Larsen, head of pensions and actuary in charge at ATP, said: “The increased life expectancy that we at ATP expect to see year after year did not occur during the pandemic.”
“And today, life expectancy is increasing more slowly than 10 years ago, but we are not done getting older,” she added.
According to the calculations from ATP, which include figures from 2024 in Denmark and data from 17 other comparable countries, the life expectancy of a 67-year-old woman is now 86.7 years, while the figure for men is 84.2 years.
The labour-market supplementary pension scheme said 2024 had been the second year in a row when life expectancy increased in Denmark, with the previous year’s figures having shown the rise to have been greatest for women, rather than for men.
In both 2021 and 2022, after the COVID-19 pandemic, by contrast, life expectancy fell for men and women, ATP said.
Fredsgaard Larsen said the increase of nearly half a year in life expectancy for Danish men, as shown in the 2024 figures, was a comparatively high number.
“It is only the second time in the past 30 years that the life expectancy of men has increased so much in a single year,” she said.
Increasing life expectancy usually means the guaranteed pension scheme ATP has to increase its provisions, though last year, the opposite was the case because the 2023 fillip in the numbers only brought predicted lifespans back to the level of 2020, ATP said a year ago.
Read the digital edition of IPE’s latest magazine

No comments yet