If you hit 65 in 2032, you can expect to live another 21 years or so – a bit less than the statisticians estimated this time last year.
National statistics office CBS now puts life expectancy for 65-year-olds in 2032 at 21.08 years, down from the 21.14 years it forecast in 2025. Life expectancy has slowly been rising since Covid knocked it down.
The numbers matter because the social affairs minister uses it to set the state pension (AOW) age, which is tied to life expectancy by law.
The AOW age is already fixed at 67 until the end of 2027, and at 67 and three months from 2028 to 2031. The 2032 figure will be decided on the basis of this new forecast.
In 1950, 65-year-olds could expect to live another 14.3 years. By 2019 that had risen to 20.1 years, before Covid knocked it back to 19.5 in both 2020 and 2021. Last year it was back up to 20.1 years.
Women still outlive men, with a gap of 1.9 years at age 65 in 2025. Men have now clawed their way back to their pre-pandemic level, but women haven’t quite got there yet.
