Eurostat · 30 countries · 2023
On average a pension starts 7.9 years earlier in Slovenia than in Iceland.
61.3age an old-age pension began · European Union · 2023
In Slovenia people started drawing one at 58.3, in Iceland at 66.2 — 7.9 years apart. The European figure sits at 61.3.
This is not the statutory pension age. Eurostat asked people who receive an old-age pension how old they were when it started, so the figure looks back over decades of different rules rather than describing today's. A country that has raised its legal age will show that only as those cohorts retire.
The map
Where pensions start earliest
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Enter the age your old-age pension began, or the age you expect it to.
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The country figures describe people who are already drawing a pension — mostly people who retired years ago, under rules that have since changed. If you have not retired yet, you are comparing your expectation against their history, and in most countries the legal age has gone up since.
Every country
All 30 countries, earliest to latest
Sort by any column. Men and women are published separately and both are here.
| Trend 2023–2023, with breaks | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slovenia | 58.3 | 59.1 | 57.5 | +1.6 years | — |
| Greece | 58.6 | 58.9 | 58.2 | +0.7 years | — |
| Romania | 59.5 | 60.0 | 59.2 | +0.8 years | — |
| Austria | 59.6 | 60.7 | 58.9 | +1.8 years | — |
| Poland | 60.0 | 61.3 | 59.3 | +2.0 years | — |
| Slovakia | 60.0 | 60.5 | 59.7 | +0.8 years | — |
| Bulgaria | 60.3 | 60.6 | 60.1 | +0.5 years | — |
| France | 60.4 | 60.1 | 60.7 | −0.6 years | — |
| Luxembourg | 60.4 | 60.2 | 60.7 | −0.5 years | — |
| Croatia | 60.6 | 61.1 | 60.1 | +1.0 year | — |
| Hungary | 60.7 | 62.3 | 59.7 | +2.6 years | — |
| Czechia | 60.8 | 62.3 | 59.8 | +2.5 years | — |
| Latvia | 61.2 | 61.2 | 61.1 | +0.1 years | — |
| Malta | 61.3 | 61.0 | 61.8 | −0.8 years | — |
| Italy | 61.4 | 60.9 | 61.9 | −1.0 year | — |
| Estonia | 61.6 | 61.4 | 61.6 | −0.2 years | — |
| Lithuania | 61.9 | 62.2 | 61.7 | +0.5 years | — |
| Germany | 62.2 | 62.3 | 62.1 | +0.2 years | — |
| Belgium | 62.5 | 62.4 | 62.5 | −0.1 years | — |
| Portugal | 62.5 | 62.2 | 62.8 | −0.6 years | — |
| Finland | 62.9 | 62.8 | 63.1 | −0.3 years | — |
| Ireland | 63.1 | 63.4 | 62.8 | +0.6 years | — |
| Spain | 63.1 | 62.9 | 63.4 | −0.5 years | — |
| Cyprus | 63.2 | 62.7 | 63.6 | −0.9 years | — |
| Norway | 63.9 | 63.9 | 63.8 | +0.1 years | — |
| Sweden | 64.0 | 63.8 | 64.1 | −0.3 years | — |
| Switzerland | 64.1 | 64.6 | 63.7 | +0.9 years | — |
| Netherlands | 64.7 | 64.8 | 64.7 | +0.1 years | — |
| Denmark | 65.7 | 65.8 | 65.6 | +0.2 years | — |
| Iceland | 66.2 | 66.1 | 66.2 | −0.1 years | — |
The gap is men minus women, so a positive number means the figure is higher for men. Eurostat publishes this table for 2023 alone, so there is no line to draw and no past to compare with.
What the numbers say
The gap between men and women runs both ways
separates the earliest country from the latest — Slovenia at 58.3 and Iceland at 66.2. The five earliest are Slovenia, Greece, Romania, Austria, Poland; the five latest are Iceland, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden.
One year, no trend
This comes from a one-off module of the Labour Force Survey, run in 2023. There is no earlier year to compare with, so this page shows none.
of 30 countries show women starting a pension earlier than men, widest in Hungary at 2.6 years. Averaged over all 30 the difference comes to 0.4 years, because the rest run the other way.
In 12 countries it is the other way round
Women started later than men in Italy, Cyprus, Malta, France and 8 others. A lower statutory age for women, where it exists or existed, is only part of what this figure measures: it also depends on who worked long enough to draw a pension at all, and on who retired before they had to.
The large economies sit close together in the middle: Poland 60.0, France 60.4, Italy 61.4, Germany 62.2, Spain 63.1, Netherlands 64.7. The spread is at the edges — early in the south-east and in Austria, late in the Nordics and Iceland.
OECD · 51 countries · 1970–2024
A second number: when work actually stops
The OECD measures something else — the age at which people leave the labour market — for 51 countries, 18 of them outside Europe, every year since 1970.
men and women in the European Union, in 2024. It fell for a generation and has been climbing since: 65.5 in 1970, down to 60.4 in 1997, back to 63.9 now.
No total, by the publisher's choice
The OECD publishes this figure for men and for women and never for both together. The difference averages 1.4 years and reaches 11.7 years in Saudi Arabia, so averaging the two would invent a number nobody published. This page keeps them apart.
countries with a full 1970–2024 series are above their own lowest point, by 4.4 years on average. The low came in the 1990s for 18 of them.
added in Bulgaria since 2003, the steepest climb in the set — followed by Estonia (+8.7 years since 2004), Romania (+7.4 years since 1997), Hungary (+6.9 years since 2001).
The figure at the top of this page and the figure here answer different questions and are built differently. Eurostat asked today's pensioners when their pension started, so it reflects decisions taken over decades. The OECD derives its figure from how many people of each age are in work this year, which is why it can reach back to 1970 — and why it is a model of the current labour market, not a record of what anyone did. Both are on this page because people mean both when they say "retirement age"; neither is the other minus a few years.
| Country | Men | Women | Gap | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indonesia | 69.8 | 69.2 | +0.6 years | 2022 |
| Chile | 69.0 | 66.2 | +2.8 years | 2024 |
| Iceland | 68.7 | 65.9 | +2.8 years | 2024 |
| Israel | 67.8 | 65.7 | +2.1 years | 2024 |
| Mexico | 67.8 | 65.7 | +2.1 years | 2024 |
| Colombia | 67.4 | 61.2 | +6.2 years | 2024 |
| Korea | 67.4 | 69.6 | −2.2 years | 2024 |
| United States | 67.3 | 66.7 | +0.6 years | 2024 |
| Estonia | 66.9 | 67.3 | −0.4 years | 2024 |
| Japan | 66.9 | 67.4 | −0.5 years | 2024 |
| New Zealand | 66.9 | 66.9 | 0.0 years | 2024 |
| Portugal | 66.5 | 64.5 | +2.0 years | 2024 |
| Denmark | 66.3 | 63.5 | +2.8 years | 2024 |
| Ireland | 66.1 | 66.0 | +0.1 years | 2024 |
| Cyprus | 65.6 | 63.1 | +2.5 years | 2024 |
| China (People’s Republic of) | 65.5 | 60.0 | +5.5 years | 2021 |
| Canada | 65.2 | 63.2 | +2.0 years | 2024 |
| Sweden | 65.1 | 65.0 | +0.1 years | 2024 |
| Netherlands | 65.0 | 64.7 | +0.3 years | 2024 |
| Australia | 64.9 | 64.4 | +0.5 years | 2024 |
| Costa Rica | 64.8 | 59.8 | +5.0 years | 2024 |
| Bulgaria | 64.8 | 62.7 | +2.1 years | 2024 |
| Argentina | 64.6 | 63.8 | +0.8 years | 2023 |
| Czechia | 64.2 | 63.0 | +1.2 years | 2024 |
| Germany | 64.2 | 63.9 | +0.3 years | 2024 |
| Switzerland | 64.2 | 64.5 | −0.3 years | 2024 |
| Italy | 64.0 | 62.6 | +1.4 years | 2024 |
| Norway | 64.0 | 63.4 | +0.6 years | 2024 |
| United Kingdom | 63.8 | 63.1 | +0.7 years | 2024 |
| Greece | 63.7 | 61.9 | +1.8 years | 2024 |
| Poland | 63.7 | 61.4 | +2.3 years | 2024 |
| Hungary | 63.6 | 62.0 | +1.6 years | 2024 |
| Latvia | 63.6 | 63.4 | +0.2 years | 2024 |
| Finland | 63.5 | 62.9 | +0.6 years | 2024 |
| Lithuania | 63.5 | 63.5 | 0.0 years | 2024 |
| Romania | 63.5 | 63.3 | +0.2 years | 2024 |
| Saudi Arabia | 62.8 | 51.1 | +11.7 years | 2019 |
| Austria | 62.7 | 61.2 | +1.5 years | 2024 |
| Slovak Republic | 62.7 | 61.2 | +1.5 years | 2024 |
| Croatia | 62.6 | 62.9 | −0.3 years | 2024 |
| Malta | 62.5 | 62.5 | 0.0 years | 2024 |
| Belgium | 62.4 | 60.6 | +1.8 years | 2024 |
| Spain | 62.4 | 63.0 | −0.6 years | 2024 |
| Russia | 62.0 | 59.8 | +2.2 years | 2020 |
| France | 61.9 | 62.4 | −0.5 years | 2024 |
| Slovenia | 60.8 | 59.5 | +1.3 years | 2024 |
| Türkiye | 60.8 | 60.5 | +0.3 years | 2024 |
| Luxembourg | 60.1 | 60.3 | −0.2 years | 2024 |
| India | 56.1 | 54.8 | +1.3 years | 2024 |
| Brazil | 55.8 | 53.9 | +1.9 years | 2024 |
| South Africa | 54.1 | 53.0 | +1.1 years | 2024 |
| European Union (27 countries) | 63.9 | 62.7 | +1.2 years | 2024 |
| OECD average country | 64.7 | 63.6 | +1.1 years | 2024 |
Each country carries its own latest year in which both men and women are published. Argentina (2023), Indonesia (2022), China (People’s Republic of) (2021), Russia (2020), Saudi Arabia (2019) stopped earlier.
Method
How this is measured
Two publishers, two questions. Nothing here is estimated on top of what they publish.
- What the figure at the top is
- The average age at which a person started receiving an old-age pension, from a one-off module of the EU Labour Force Survey run in 2023. It is reported by the people drawing the pension, which is why it describes the past rather than current law. Eurostat also publishes a median; this page uses the mean.
- What it is not
- Not the statutory or legal pension age, not the earliest age at which a pension can be claimed, and not the age at which people stop working — that last one is the OECD figure further up this page. It is also not a distribution: one number per country, so there is no percentile to be had, only which side of the average you fall on.
- What the OECD figure is
- The effective labour market exit age, from the OECD's Pensions at a glance database. The OECD derives it from the share of each age group that is in work, so it describes this year's labour market rather than individual histories, and it exists for men and for women only — never for both together.
- Coverage
- 30 countries have a pension-start figure for 2023. The OECD series covers 51 countries, 18 of them outside Europe — Indonesia, Chile, Israel, Mexico among them — and is the only figure on this site that reaches past Europe.
- Series breaks
-
Eurostat flags none here, because a single year cannot break. The OECD flags none either:
every observation it publishes for this measure carries the status "normal value", which is
what lets this page talk about 1970 and 2024 in one sentence. The gate in
scripts/validate-oecd.mjsfails if that ever changes.
- Dataset Eurostat
lfso_23pens03, Age at which the person started receiving an old-age pension (2023) - Last updated by Eurostat 2026-09-10
- Retrieved 2026-10-25
- DOI10.2908/LFSO_23PENS03
- Eurostat metadataexplanatory texts
- Second dataset OECD
OECD.ELS.SPD,DSD_PAG@DF_PAG,1.0, measureELMEA— Effective labour market exit age - OECD series 1970 to 2024, retrieved 2026-10-25
- OECD citation OECD (2026), Pensions at a glance, OECD Data Explorer, OECD Data Explorer (accessed on 2026-10-25)
Licences: Eurostat data may be reused, including commercially, with attribution. The OECD terms allow the same — "even for commercial use" — on condition that the citation above is given; that is why it is printed here and not only in our notes. The OECD terms are here. How we handle data is on the method page.