Yet another off radar plot 2

Junk Charts 2023-02-24

In the last post, I described my experience reading the radar plot, by Bloomberg Graphics, that compares countries in terms of their citizens' post-retirement lives.

Bloomberg_retirementages_radar_male

I used a different approach:

Redo_bloomberg_retirementages_radar_male

Instead of focusing on the actual time points (ages), my chart highlights the variance from the OECD averages.

The chart compares countries along three metrics: total life expectancy (including healthy and unhealthy periods), effective retirement age, and the number of healthy years in retirement, which is the issue of greatest interest.

From the above chart, France and Luxembourg have the same profiles. Their citizens live a year or two above the average life expectancy. They retire about 5 years earlier than average, and enjoy about 5 more years of healthy retirement.

Meanwhile, the life expectancy of Americans is about the same as the average OECD resident. Retirement also occurs around the same age as the OECD average. Nevertheless, Americans end up with fewer years of healthy retirement than the OECD average.