Discover Which Country Offers Over 98% of Your Salary in Retirement!

Retirement brings relief for some but anxiety for others. Will it be boring? Will it lead to isolation? Will it be possible to maintain one’s standard of living? Beyond the public debates about retirement age or payroll contributions, the amount of the pension is a major concern for many, especially when considering that 60% of retirees earn less than the minimum wage, according to 2024 figures from Drees.

Actually, focusing solely on the pension amount is not very meaningful; what matters more is the difference compared to the income earned during active life. This is especially true when comparing different countries, where standards of living vary widely. For example, in France, the average income is just under 72% of one’s net salary. However, some countries far exceed this rate. Out of the 38 OECD member states, France ranks only 13th in terms of the best pension replacement rates, a figure that reflects “how a pension system provides income to retirees in place of their salary.” To fairly compare countries, despite their radically different systems, the OECD aggregates everything a retiree mandatorily receives. This includes pensions paid directly by the state, like in France, as well as money set aside by companies for their employees, as in the Netherlands.

In reality, it is in Portugal where retirees earn the most relative to their previous income, continuing to receive no less than 98.8% of their salary! Portuguese workers are generally paid less than their French counterparts, but this rate allows them to maintain nearly the same purchasing power after retirement. In other words, the percentage is huge, but the final amount in euros might not necessarily be higher than a French pension.

The same observation applies in Turkey (with a slight disparity between men and women) and the Netherlands, where retirees earn a little more than 93% of their salary. Greece, Austria, Luxembourg, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Denmark, Colombia, and Slovakia also offer comparatively higher pensions than France, with replacement rates ranging from 90 to 72.5%.

Conversely, among OECD countries, Lithuania offers the worst remuneration to its seniors, maintaining only 28.9% of their original salary upon retirement. In neighboring countries like Belgium, Germany, or the United Kingdom, the situation is also somewhat less favorable with rates of 60.9%, 55.3%, and 54.4% respectively. The same goes for the United States, where the retirement system is fundamentally different from ours and largely relies on individual capitalization: the pension paid by the state covers, on average, only 50.5% of salary income, forcing workers to save money throughout their careers to ensure a decent standard of living.

Ultimately, this global overview shows that a high replacement rate remains the best shield for entering retirement without losing one’s standard of living. While Portugal’s nearly perfect score is enviable, France still fares quite honorably, above the OECD average (61%) and the European Union average (67.8%). However, even in our country, the amount of pensions varies from one department to another.