Bulgaria Retirement Age for Both Sexes the Same after 2020

The Bulgarian retirement age for women will soon be the same as for men. Photo by Sofia Photo Agency

Retirement age in Bulgaria for both genders will be the same after 2020, the Minister of Social Policy and Labor, Totyu Mladenov has confirmed.

Mladenov explained that in 2017 retirement age for men would reach 65 while by 2020 the one for females will be 63, and it will increase, along with the required years of service, by 4 months each year for both sexes. He added that making retirement age the same after 2020 can only happen gradually.

The minimum retirement age in Bulgaria was increased by 4 months as of January 1, 2012, as part of a controversial retirement reform package that kicked in.

The same measure will be applied on the first day of each of the upcoming several years, until the retirement age in Bulgaria reaches 65 years for men and 63 for women.

Up until the new pension reform was approved in December 2011, Bulgaria's retirement age was 63 years for men and 60 years for women.

Experts have warned however that a demographic and economic slump may force today's actively working Bulgarians to retire at the age of 70 and not at all comfortably at that.

The retirement contributions of the currently actively working Bulgarians are funneled into paying pensions and health services, rather than being stashed away to be used when today's middle-aged Bulgarians grow old. According to the grim forecasts of experts in the social affairs field the fallout of the demographic slump in the 90s will be felt most acutely about 2035.

Surveys about Bulgaria's gloomy demographics have been in abundance over the last two decades. Recently however it emerged that the youngest member of the European Union has the most grey-haired demographic picture not only in the bloc, but in the whole world.

The headlong fall in Bulgaria's demography spell troubled times for the country in economic terms.

The number of working Bulgarians is currently by one third below the number of pensioners, who steadily exceed the number of babies born. The burden on the social security system is getting heavier, experts say, but fail to provide solutions to the problems that this will trigger.

The state has forced people to retire a few years later, but this will hardly make up for the shortage of young workers. The social security system, in its turn, is already failing to take good care of the increasing numbers of pensioners, dooming the majority of them to miserable living and the mercy of their children.

The dynamics in Bulgaria's demography has been the same for quite some time already, but the figures are hardly debated as the average employee is just scrambling to earn a living amid the debris of a free falling economy.

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