Health key factor in lifting Super age
We have an NZ Super conundrum.
The country can’t afford to not lift the age people qualify for NZ Super to 65 as the ratio of over-65s to younger people increases.
But people can’t afford for the age to rise to 65.
Late last month, Retirement Commissioner Jane Wrightson said research the commission had done very clearly showed that lifting the age over 65 would have a disproportionate impact on those who have least in our society: Mā ori, women, and Pacific people.
She was delivering her advice to the Government on the country’s retirement policy.
The upshot of Te Ara Ahunga Ora the Retirement Commission’s advice can be paraphrased as:
Too many of us are too poor to buy the overpriced houses that are the bedrock of a stable and prosperous retirement. Too many people are paid so little, they are just getting by, they are not going to save a retirement enhancing nest egg.
Deciding to lift the age at which people get NZ Super would mean those who benefit least from our economy taking another hit.
Some see means-testing NZ Super as the silver bullet to bring down the cost of NZ Super without lifting the age of eligibility, or having special higher tax rates for people getting it while still working. Both have merit and drawbacks.
But the elephant in the NZ Super room is our health.
If so many of us were not unwell in our 50s and 60s, the NZ Super age of eligibility debate would be so much easier.
We often talk about the unfairness of people from certain parts of society getting NZ Super for fewer years than others: Mā ori, and Pacific people, for example. Eating well comes at a cost: Partly because of that, around four in 10 adults are not eating three servings of vegetables each day.
Men can expect to get NZ Super for fewer years than women.
The rather dismal ‘‘How long will I live?’’ calculator from Stats NZ tells me I can expect to live until age 85. If I were a woman, it estimated I’d get another two-anda-half years.
But life expectancy is less important to than health expectancy when it comes to living a good life.
The 2016 Social Report Te Pū rongo Oranga Tangata defined our health expectancy as the years we have in good health, and free from functional limitations.
These are our prime working years. For men it was 65. For women it was 66.5. That was across the whole population. It was far worse for some.
Things have improved a bit since then, but a self-inflicted epidemic of poor health is blighting not only our lives, but our ability to fund decent retirements. The Director-General of Health’s 2020 report on the state of public health said the determinants of health were 40% socioeconomic, 10% physical environment, 30% health behaviours, and 20% healthcare.
When I used the term ‘‘selfinflicted’’, the self I had in mind was both the wider self of our society, and the narrower self of the individual.
If there’s one thing the last 50 years have taught us is that health requires both individual responsibility, and public health responsibility.
People didn’t start getting dumber in the 1970s, leading to an obesity and ill-health epidemic, but we did basically stop trying to create a healthier society, allowed income and racial inequality to flourish, and saw bad processed food become the norm.
A National government killed the Public Health Commission in the 1990s to please big business.
On an individual basis, good health is easier to achieve when you are well educated, and have a decent income and a choice of housing. Health is literally wealth.
Staying work-fit healthy is key to a prosperous life, and a defence against the age of eligibility for NZ Super rising.
From the nation’s perspective, our failure to build a healthy nation, like our failure to build affordable homes, is making everything about NZ Super debate far harder than it should be.