Paul McCartney and company still working at 64

It was the Beatles’ Paul McCartney who sang “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?” just on 40 years ago but an HSBC bank survey has found there is much more to life in 2007 than “Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?”

The survey of 21,000 people in 21 countries found that a growing number of 60 and 70-year-olds are in work with two thirds saying they wanted to work rather than because they needed the money. This reversed the trend of the 1970s and 1980s when rising unemployment in industrialised countries had workers being encouraged to retire in their 50s.

Referring to the previous generation, Clive Bannister, the 48-year-old HSBC insurance head, said: “We’ve all seen uncles retire early and just sit around and it’s not so jolly.”

On the positive side the HSBC survey estimated that Britons aged 60 to 79 contributed the equivalent of $10 billion in voluntary work and $61 billion in family care every year.

But as societies aged early retirement was described as becoming an expensive luxury. A combination of life expectancy increasing with families having fewer children meant that many countries were running short on funds to pay for retirement at 60.

The survey found that the problem was especially acute in Japan and Italy where either young people would have to pay more taxes to finance public pension schemes or older people would need to work for more years to pay their own way.

It all gives a new twist to the classic Beatles song if older people find that there is not enough money going around to let them retire at 55 or 64. As one commentator said: Will you still need me? Yes. Will you still feed me? No.