This study examines how extending the mandatory retirement age affects the replacement rate of defined benefit (DB) retirement pensions across different firm sizes and analyzes how these changes influence older adults’ ability to meet medical and lo...
This study examines how extending the mandatory retirement age affects the replacement rate of defined benefit (DB) retirement pensions across different firm sizes and analyzes how these changes influence older adults’ ability to meet medical and long-term care expenditures. Using the Korea Insurance Development Institute’s (KIDI) firm-size–specific reference resignation rates and age-specific average wages, we simulated a scenario in which the mandatory retirement age is extended from 60 to 70. The findings indicate that retirement age extension generally increases years of service, leading to higher retirement benefits and improved pension replacement rates. However, the magnitude of this effect varies substantially by firm size: while workers in firms with 300 or more employees experienced an extension of expected tenure by 4 to 6 years, those in smaller firms showed an increase of only 1 to 2 years. Consequently, the improvement in replacement rates from retirement age extension was considerably more pronounced among employees in larger firms.
Higher replacement rates enhance financial capacity to cover essential expenditures in old age, including medical and long-term care costs. Workers whose replacement rates increased meaningfully through retirement age extension may benefit from improved access to preventive care and continuous treatment. In contrast, workers for whom the effect was limited are likely to experience only modest improvements in their ability to absorb out-of-pocket medical expenses, widening firm-size disparities in healthcare spending capacity among older adults. These findings demonstrate that retirement age extension can have heterogeneous impacts on both income security and medical and long-term care expenditure capacity across different groups of workers.