On the go: Latest data on healthy life expectancy, published by the Office for National Statistics, have poured fuel on an already blazing debate about the recently increased age at which women can access their state pension.
Just last month a group of women won a judicial review into the increased pension age for women which is set to reach age 66 in 2020.
The ONS data released on 12 December show that women can expect to live 63.6 years in good health three years before the increased state pension age of 66.
Males can expect to live for 63.1 years in good health.
This means that women could potentially suffer poor health with no means of working for around three years before they are able to access the state pension at the new age of 66.
Ian Browne, a pension expert at Quilter, said: “Considering the average life expectancy of a woman in the UK is now 82.9 years, the statistics show that they potentially start to suffer with ill health 19 years before they die at the age of 63, three years before they are able to access any state pension. This creates a situation where hundreds of thousands of people struggle financially because they are unable to carry on working but are years away from accessing their pension."
Browne advocates an “option to receive a reduced state pension for early access and an increased state pension for late access. This would give people who are in need the ability to avoid a situation where they might be too ill to work but only slightly too young to access their state pension.”
