Germany’s government-appointed pension commission released recommendations this week to gradually raise the retirement age to 70 by 2092, a move drawing global attention.
The commission also recommended scrapping a rule that currently allows workers who have contributed 45 years to retire at 63 without financial penalties.
Germany’s standard retirement age has already been rising and is set to reach 67 by 2031, continuing a long trend of governments pushing workers toward later retirement.
The proposals must pass through parliamentary debates and votes before any changes become law, leaving significant political uncertainty ahead.
Germany joins France, Italy, and China among nations that have weighed or enacted laws to raise their retirement ages in recent years.
The U.S. is no stranger to this debate, having already raised its full Social Security retirement age once before, through a 1983 law that took effect beginning in 2000.
That law gradually pushed the retirement age to 67 for Americans born in 1960 or later, with benefits available as early as 62 at a permanently reduced rate.
Social Security’s underlying trust funds are projected to be depleted by late 2032, which could trigger a 24% across-the-board benefit cut, equal to roughly $18,100 for a couple retiring at the start of 2033.
Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano said in September that “everything’s being considered” regarding a potential retirement age increase, though that comment was later withdrawn.
Karen Glenn, Social Security’s chief actuary, has noted there are more than 140 different options on the Social Security Administration’s website to address the pending insolvency.
Raising the retirement age by two years would address only about one-fifth of Social Security’s total funding gap, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The CBPP also found that lifting the retirement age to 70 would result in an average lifetime benefit cut of nearly 20% for American retirees.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has argued that a retiree turning 62 in 2034 could lose a total of $100,000 in lifetime benefit payments if the retirement age is raised to 69.
Critics also point to America’s comparatively short life expectancy, which as of 2023 was roughly 4.1 years lower than the average of comparable developed countries.
The average American male is expected to live to 75.8 years, meaning a retirement age of 70 would leave most men fewer than six years to collect benefits they spent entire careers funding.
Teresa Ghilarducci, an economist and professor at The New School in New York and an expert on retirement, argued the German plan reflects a fundamentally different social context that does not translate easily to the U.S.
“The deeper lesson from Germany is not simply ‘work longer.’ It is that if society expects people to work longer, it must first create the conditions that make longer working lives possible and dignified,” Ghilarducci said.
“Germany, despite its own challenges, remains more worker-friendly than the United States, because workers have more institutional power and stronger labor-market protections. The German reforms are being proposed in an entirely different social and economic context,” she added.
Ghilarducci noted that raising the full U.S. retirement age from 67 to 70 would amount to an across-the-board benefit cut of about 20% at every claiming age.
Proponents of raising the retirement age argue that rising life expectancy and the trust fund’s imminent depletion justify reform, but opponents insist it is effectively a benefit cut that disproportionately harms low-income and vulnerable workers.
