[Editorial] Older to be old

Senior citizens are defined by the government as those aged 65 or older. Now the government is moving to raise the threshold to 70 or 75. In other words, it is saying you have to be older to be old.

This proposal may sound innocuous to many old people that do not feel as old as they really are because they are healthy. Moreover, they have many more years to live than those at their age would have had decades ago. The life expectancy in Korea soared from 65.9 years in 1980 to 80.7 years in 2010 because of improvements in nutrition, medicine and public health, to name only a few.

But the national association of senior citizens, a powerful voting bloc, is up in arms over the proposal to raise the age threshold. It has good reason to oppose it.

Should it be raised to 70, those aged 65 to 69 would no longer be entitled to such welfare benefits as the monthly pay of up to 94,600 won from the basic old-age pension program. Nor would they be given many other benefits, ranging from discounts on train rides and free-of-charge subway rides to free admissions to public parks and museums.

Still, it is inevitable to raise the threshold if it is to put the brake on soaring welfare spending. If it were to be put at 70, annual savings for the basic old-age pension program alone would be 1 trillion won. It is necessary to curb welfare expenditures in a country that is projected to be classified as a super-aged society in 2026, with those aged 65 or older accounting for 20 percent of the entire population in that year.

But a bigger target the government is setting its sights on when it proposes to raise the age threshold is the pension age, which is in the process of being raised from 60 to 65. The government may be considering another raise for the pension age ― a herculean task that would invite tremendous resistance from those on the national pension program, which is projected to be depleted in 2053 if no other action should be taken.

Raising the age threshold for either senior citizen entitlements or national pension benefits must be based on the premise that people work up to that age. But the problem is that not many jobs are available to people approaching that threshold.