IELTS Task 2 sample essay: Working Until Seventy

As people live longer and pension costs rise, some argue that everyone should be required to work until the age of seventy. I disagree with a fixed requirement of this kind, because it ignores the enormous differences between jobs and between people, although I accept that many will need to work longer than in the past.

The main problem with a single retirement age of seventy is that work is not equally demanding. An office worker in good health may be perfectly able to continue into their seventies, but a construction worker, a nurse who lifts patients or a farm labourer often cannot. Forcing such people to keep working could damage their health and, in jobs where strength and quick reactions matter, put others at risk. Life expectancy also varies widely between social groups, so a high fixed age would mean that some people, often those in the hardest jobs, spend very few years in retirement at all.

That said, the pressure behind this proposal is real. In many countries the number of retired people is growing faster than the number of workers whose taxes support them. Rather than compulsion, however, governments could encourage longer working lives through flexibility: allowing people to move to part-time work, offering retraining for less physical roles and letting those who continue working build a larger pension.

Such an approach would keep experienced workers in the economy without punishing those whose bodies cannot cope with another decade of hard labour.

In conclusion, requiring everyone to work until seventy would be unfair to people in physically demanding jobs. A flexible system that rewards working longer, rather than forcing it, would meet the needs of an ageing population more fairly.