Ageing Workforce, Social Cohesion and Sustainable Development : Political Challenges within the Baltic Sea Region: Sweden

The current Swedish pension system is flexible. Workers may choose to retire, partially or fully, at any time after the age of 61, while still working fullor part-time. The system also allows retirees to temporarily stop collecting pension benefits and return to employment, but they have no right to continue working after the age of 67. Like in many other countries, the effective retirement age has been rising in Sweden since the mid-1990s and today it is the highest in the European Union (EU). In the following, we document the changes in effective retirement age by gender, education and health status. We also discuss what factors might underlie these changes. We start with an overview of the pension system, the development of health and the effective pension age for different groups, before making some reflections about challenges with regard to increasing the employment levels among elderly workers in Sweden in the future