Denmark’s state pension age just went up – so why aren’t the Danes more bothered?
The Danish government recently increased the state pension age from 67 to 70 years, the highest level in Europe. I spent the first couple of days after the new law was passed wondering why none of the Danes I asked seemed that bothered. “Well, what else are you supposed to do? Retire and sit and eat and look out of the window?” shrugged a friend, 58, who works for the local council. His response was typical: 67 or 70, it wasn’t a big deal. The Danish media made a half-hearted attempt to interview working Danes who felt a bit disgruntled but claims by international media that there was an “outcry” or that the new law was “controversial” are off the mark.
Having been told that they must delay their dotage by another three years, why were the Danes not making placards and lighting the torches for a march on parliament? After all, attempts to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 in France brought down a government.
Meanwhile, Denmark has never been wealthier, the state treasury is constantly revising its revenue forecasts upwards (by many billions in the past year alone) and, incidentally, pension age is projected to rise to 74 by 2040. So what’s going on?
Essentially, workers trust that the state will take care of them if they aren’t able to continue working. In 2021 the government introduced something called the Arne pension (named after a brewery worker called Arne), which offers a special early retirement provision for people who have worked in more physically demanding jobs, typically since their teens. On top of that, many Danes have private pensions or are part of union-run schemes, which makes them less reliant on the DKK15,000 (€2,000) per month paid by the state.
There’s another key factor at play here: the Danes work fewer hours per year than almost any other nation in the OECD so perhaps extending their working years doesn’t seem so onerous. They tend to be well informed about the realities of the global economy and geo-political turmoil so there is a general public acceptance that defence spending needs to increase significantly in the coming years and revenue from Ozempic won’t cover it all.
There is one aspect of the pension story that did inspire expressions of mild resentment among the Danes who I surveyed. In a last desperate attempt to provoke them, I pointed out that their politicians – those who pushed Denmark to be at the vanguard of pension policy – voted to receive their very generous state pension from the age of 60. Now that did get a reaction. No one likes to see their politicians feathering their own nests – not even the Danes.
Michael Booth is Monocle’s Copenhagen correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
