Elderly prefer work to retirement

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Most people want to work longer in old age, rather than retire completely, suggests new research.

That's the main finding of a survey for the bank HSBC into attitudes to retirement in 20 different countries and regions around the world.

72% of respondents in the survey said they wanted to see mandatory retirement ages scrapped.

Researchers surveyed 21,000 people and 6,000 employers in the bank's second international study.

Among UK respondents, 68% said they wanted flexible working arrangements in later life, as opposed to 12% who wanted to continue working full-time, and 20% who never wanted to do paid work again.

Flexible retirement

HSBC's adviser on global ageing, Dr Ken Dychtwald said: "We came out of the last century with the belief that retirement was better than work, and that what people really wanted to do was to stop working and just lounge and socialise for their remaining years.

"70% of the population said they wanted to be working in retirement. They don't want full time work either, they want part-time, flex-time, maybe even trying their hand at a new career."

The survey also found that the attitude of the workforce did not chime with the attitudes of employers.

The researchers discovered that many employers had not yet realised that times were changing and still believed there would be a never-ending supply of young workers.

But Dr Dychtwald said because of declining birth rates in previous decades this was just not going to happen.

"There is a real mismatch between what the world wants in terms of new models of work in later years but we saw that most employers were not really being responsive to these new possibilities" he said.

Under age discrimination legislation which comes into force in October 2006, UK employers will not be able to force people to retire before the age of 65.