Retirement

When President Aquino computes the number of people disappointed by his veto of a higher Social Security Service (SSS) pension, he should count not just the 2.15 million who are directly affected but also their families.

Demographers place the average Filipino family size at five, so that’s about 10.75 million people: the pensioner, a spouse and their children, all of them surely of voting age since the pensioner is a retiree.

The extended family is still the norm in our country. Many children live with their parents throughout their life, either as dependents or as providers for the elderly.

Last year a TV interview featured a beggar stooped by age – possibly in her 80s or 90s – who is a regular fixture along a busy road near Ayala Alabang Village in Muntinlupa. The woman sells rags to motorists, but many simply give her cash (bills of P50 to P100 are common) without taking a rag, impressed by her stamina in her old age. She told the TV interviewer that she earned from P3,000 to P5,000 a day, mostly from handouts, which helped feed a large brood of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in a nearby slum area.

Obviously the beggar does not receive any pension. For those who do not belong to the haciendero class, pensions help put food on the family table, buy medicine and generally make aging more bearable.

The direct pensioners are getting sympathy from those among the 31 million SSS members who are thinking of their pensions upon retirement.

These members are listening to critics who say the SSS made bad investments in stocks and other instruments, which left the system with no other option but to raise monthly premiums if pensioners are to get an across-the-board increase of P2,000 a month.

So far there’s been no detailed explanation of the investments made by the SSS under daang sarado.

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While the government is grappling with this problem, we should all start taking a second look at the way we view aging. Senior citizens enjoy many privileges in our country, but employment opportunities are rare. Laws in fact are designed to keep them out of jobs.

There wouldn’t be such reliance on pensions if there were more employment opportunities for seniors. With advances in medicine and greater awareness of healthy lifestyles, people are living longer with all their physical and mental faculties intact, many bringing with them the expertise that can only come with age.

Yet societies including our own are increasingly becoming youth-centric. Instead of allowing people to work for a couple more years in their chosen fields, laws have been crafted for earlier retirement. In the police and fire services, the retirement age was gradually lowered from 65 (the age in most government offices) to 56 – the same retirement age in the military.

That rule must have been crafted by people who think dementia, not life begins at 40. Or by those who think everyone is stuck in a dead-end job and can’t wait to get out of a daily rut after 30 to 35 years of toil. The booming population must have been another consideration; the upper echelons, particularly in the uniformed services, must keep making way for new blood.

But for people who believe 50 is the new 30 and so on, 56 is just mid-career. Being required to retire at 56 can be a wrenching experience for those who have dedicated their entire adult life to their profession.

Early retirement is also becoming a problem when our extended family system is being eroded and children no longer want the responsibility of looking after the older generation.

Some careers favor age. Many Supreme Court justices, who retire at 70, are good examples of the saying that wisdom grows with age. Several of them have taken on equally challenging jobs after retirement, and they proved up to the job.

The self-employed can of course work until their very last breath. There is no retirement age for taipans and other titans of business.

Show business can be cruel to matinee idols, but it also offers lifetime opportunities. Consider the enduring star power of Susan Roces and her contemporary, Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada, or even Sen. Tito Sotto.

The arts also do not discriminate on age. National Artist Frankie Sionil Jose, whose novel “Ermita” I enjoyed reading over the weekend, remains a prolific writer in his 90s.

I was pleased to learn that David Bowie’s latest album “Blackstar,” released just two days before he died of cancer last week at age 69, has topped Adele’s monster album “25” in the UK charts.

The music video of one of the cuts in the album, “Lazarus,” is mesmerizing if a bit creepy; it shows Bowie at the top of his craft (fans say he proved even better) literally up to his last breath.

We should be glad that there’s no retirement age for artists.

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Laws have been passed prohibiting discrimination in the workplace based on gender or religion, and there are laws promoting employment opportunities for the disabled.

It’s not accurate to say that laws on retirement encourage discrimination based on age. There are people who actually like early retirement. But we need laws that provide incentives for employing those past retirement age as defined in various sectors or professions, in case people want to continue working in their senior years.

National productivity can even be enhanced with retirees contributing to the output. And people don’t have to rely too much on pensions.