How long might I live in retirement? New data still suggests that people in their 40s or older should test their retirement plans for a likely lifespan of 25 to 30 years after age 65.
Understanding how long you might live is a key part of considering how to manage financially in retirement. My colleagues in the Retirement Income Interest Group* and I have followed mortality trends over time. In our RIIG drawdown framework, we compare the likelihood of outliving funds as they are drawn down in retirement. We like to summarise how to think about likely longevity in retirement planning by suggesting that for most people in their 40s or older, retirement plans should be tested for a lifespan of between age 90 to age 95.
An earlier version of this post is here, an explainer on mortality trends is here, and a recent commentary on all-age New Zealand mortality is here.
A PDF of this post is here.
What are the numbers?
The latest update of StatsNZ cohort life table data which is most helpful for answering the question How long could I live? was published in March 2025.
From this data we can chart the distribution of lifespans achieved or expected in a cohort, and calculate indicators such as average lifespan, the median age at death, the most common age at death, and the age to which at least one in five people live to.
For retirement policy and retirement planning, we consider how long people might live while receiving NZ Super (the public pension in New Zealand) or drawing down from invested assets, probably in KiwiSaver (the private pension). As both NZ Super and KiwiSaver are available from age 65, the indicators of note are those of NZ population cohorts born in different years who survived to age 65 or, in the case of younger cohorts, are expected to do so.
I look at 3 cohorts reaching age 65 in 2026, and twenty years before or after. These cohorts represent current older retirees, those now around the age when most people retire or step back from work, and those probably thinking of retirement in a couple of decades.
Of the current retirees, 89% of women and 84% of men born in 1961 are expected to reach age 65. Of the younger generation born in 1981, 93% and 89% are expected to do so.
How long will New Zealanders live?
The key charts are here (PDF). The key indicators have not changed much from previous estimates, with only a couple rounding up another year. The overall picture is still the same:
- Women generally live longer than men. This can be seen by comparing the key indicators on the red and blue charts for each generation.
- Lifespans are getting longer over time. Each generation is expected to live longer than the last, as can be seen by comparing down the page.
- Ages at death are becoming more similar but uncertainty in age at death is extending to higher ages. This is seen by the ‘hump’ on the charts moving to the right over time and getting narrower.
- Life expectancy, as the average of age at death, is not the best indicator of how long life might be. “Life expectancy”, whether at birth or at age 65, is the average of the distribution of ages at death shown on each chart. Because of the shape of the ‘hump’, life expectancy is lower than other indicators, and is on the left-hand side of the chart. This means people are more likely to die at ages older than life expectancy than younger.
What does it mean for me?
Individuals will have their own risk factors, known or unknown. Individual longevity experience depends on many risk factors, as well as luck. Longevity risk is when you live longer than how long you expected to in your retirement planning. To guard against longevity risk, testing retirement plans for scenarios of living a longer life are more relevant than scenarios of a shorter life.
This is not the same as estimating when you will die. Instead, it means thinking about what you will do for retirement income should you live a possible length of time. It may be longer than you think you might live. People generally underestimate how long they will live. Some people want their assets to provide income for their whole life. Others are content to run down their assets to a fixed age and then live on the public pension. It’s important to think about a plan and scenarios in advance.
With this perspective:
- For considering longevity risk in retirement planning, indicators other than life expectancy are most relevant. In testing the chances of a longer life rather than shorter, the indicators on the right-hand side of the chart are salient. A conservative range, but not the extreme of old age, is given by the ages between the most common lifespan and the age to which one-in-five live.
- People in their 40s or older should test their retirement plans for a likely lifespan of 25 to 30 years after age 65 (to age 90 to 95). These numbers hold true for the latest data, as can be seen by the range suggested between the most common and one-in-five indicators on the new charts.
For the current retiree generation: a woman reaching her 65th birthday in 2026 (born in 1961) belongs to a cohort which, counting everyone born in the same year, has an average expected lifespan of 83 years. But those who survive to age 65 can expect to live on average to age 88, and half of them to at least age 90. The most common age at death is expected to be 91. Two in five can expect to live to at least age 95.
A man of the same ages should reduce the indicators by a couple of years.The male equivalent numbers for the last two indicators are 89 and 93 years.
Improvements continue steadily for younger cohorts, so that children of the above generation, who are born twenty years later, on reaching age 65, can add one or two years to the key indicators. From this we see the range of 90-95 years is suggested as the test for retirement planning for people in the 40s or older.
Data based on the whole population includes a range of individual experiences. Individuals have different mortality risks. However, because of the role of chance in how long we live, population data gives a good guide to the range of possible individual prospects.
Keeping up with longevity prospects is an important part of retirement policy and personal retirement planning.
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