Tertiary Students Voice Ideas For Retirement Policy

NZ Union of Student’s Associations

Media release: 7 March 2013

Tertiary Students Voice Ideas For Retirement Policy

A nationwide series of focus groups aimed at gathering a student point of view on fair ways to fund older citizens when they hit retirement age is giving the Commission for Financial Literacy and Retirement Income a raft of ideas to consider for this year’s review of retirement income policy.

In the last fortnight three focus groups have been co-hosted with the Commission by the NZ Union of Students’ Associations and respective local student associations at the universities of Otago, Lincoln and Auckland on the following topic: “Will this generation save enough to cover its own costs and an ageing population – What’s Fair?”. The final focus group takes place tomorrow (this Friday, 8 March), at Victoria University of Wellington.

Not surprisingly over 80% of participants indicated they had not given any thought to the implications of either personal retirement planning, or New Zealand’s retirement income policy previously. One participant described the session as a “wake up call”, adding the following comment on their feedback form: “The complexity of the issues and our future looks pretty grim”.

Questions, challenges and ideas raised at the groups have included:

• How far should the government go in shifting the retirement income risk away from the public account and towards individuals?

• Is the primary function of a universal superannuation to keep people out of poverty?

• Is the NZ Superannuation scheme really fairer to women if their base income over a lifetime continues to be so much lower than men?

• If your life expectancy, say in the case of Māori, is lower (not catching up with non-Māori) should there be an entitlement to access superannuation earlier? (e.g. retaining it at 65 if the beginning age slowly rises to 67)

• Over future decades is it likely that NZ Superannuation will shift from being a citizen’s entitlement to something more like a welfare benefit?

• Given that people are living longer what can be done to ensure they’re also living healthier to lessen public health spending in the future?

• Now that a conversation about a Living Wage is on the table, would it be helpful to also encourage a focus on Lifetime Earnings?

• Could a concept such as imposing an earlier ‘working life retirement’ of age 60 be worth exploring – with people having the option of moving out of line management positions and into (lower paid) mentoring and social good roles but freeing up jobs for younger generations?

A theme emerging from the focus groups is a concern amongst students that they are not being exposed sufficiently to specific courses on financial literacy throughout their education, leading to an unnecessarily high level of naivety when they start tertiary education and an unknown level of complacency amongst their peers

One feedback form stated: “I want to know how the majority of ‘my generation’ feel or what is their view on the current retirement policy – do they know or care?”.

ENDS

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