This chart is about “retirement period” – the length of time from when we retire to when we die. You might think that this period is constantly rising as our life expectancy increases. But that’s not the case. The chart below shows how the average retirement period of Canadians has changed over time.
Not surprisingly, the shortest retirement period in the past half-century was in 1977. The retirement period then was 15.9 years, with the average retirement age that year being 65.5 and the average age of death at 81.4 (for males and females combined).
Over the next 22 years, the average retirement age constantly fell until it bottomed out at 61.4 in 1999. At the same time, the average life expectancy rose and as a result the average retirement period got progressively longer.
After 1999, however, the average retirement age reversed its long-term trend and started to rise again. The average age at death was rising fast enough so that the average retirement period kept on increasing.
The peak occurred in 2012 when the retirement period was 22.7 years. Since then, it has been decreasing as we continue to retire a little later each year. As of 2025, the average retirement period is just 20.5 years.
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Looking ahead, it’s hard to envision a scenario where the average retirement period rises again. We have a shrinking worker-to-retiree population, so older Canadians will need to stay in the work force longer. At the same time, I expect general life expectancy to continue increasing slowly, since most of the low-hanging fruit in terms of medical advances has already been picked.
As an aside, the concept of retirement age is fuzzier than it was 50 years ago. More people continue to work at least part-time after their formal retirement but still identify as retired. Your author would be one of those people.
If we somehow adjusted retirement age to reflect part-time work (I haven’t done this) then today’s average retirement period would be even shorter than is shown in the chart.
Only an actuary would find good news in this chart. The good news is that a longer working life and a shorter retirement period should make it easier for Canadians to save enough for retirement.
Finally, the average retirement age shown in the chart reflects the private sector only. It would have been lower for the public sector and higher for the self-employed. Note also that life expectancy in the chart is measured from age 65, not from birth. The former is more appropriate given that we are looking at the life expectancy of people who have reached retirement age.
Frederick Vettese is former chief actuary of Morneau Shepell and author of the PERC retirement calculator (perc-pro.ca)
