The debate on pensions has reignited around a figure: 64 years. It is the age at which the League would like to allow those who started paying contributions before 1996 to leave their jobs, widening a channel currently reserved only for “pure contributors”, i.e. those who started paying contributions after 1996. But together with the discussion on early retirement at 64, using TFR to compensate for gaps in contributions, there is another, even more decisive: how many years do Italians spend in the job market, before going to pension. According to Eurostat data updated to 2025, the expected duration of working life in Italy is 33 years against a European average of 37.5: we are second to last in the Union, ahead of only Romania. And the national average is strongly influenced by the gender gap: women remain on average in the labor market for only 28.4 years, the lowest value of the Twenty-seven.
What does the League’s proposal on early retirement at 64 include?
Today, leaving at 64 is only possible for those who started paying after 1 January 1996. The proposal illustrated by the Undersecretary of Labor Claudio Durigon would extend the same channel to workers in the mixed system, on a voluntary basis and with at least 25 years of contributions. In exchange it would be necessary to accept the entirely contributory recalculation of the allowance, including the portion accrued before 1996, and reach a minimum threshold equal to three times the social allowance: in 2026 it will be 1,638.72 euros gross per month. Those who don’t get there could transform part of the TFR set aside at the INPS into an income.
The simulations of the CGIL Social Security Observatory, updated to 6 September and published by Corriere della Sera, estimate that the recalculation would produce a 10.6% reduction in the allowance, between 183 and 366 euros gross less per month depending on the career profile. In the absence of a regulatory text, however, the coefficients and tax treatment of the annuity remain to be defined.
The real issue is the threshold. Taking the average salary of private employees in 2024, equal to 24,486 euros gross, the contributory pension at 64 years of age would be 893 euros per month after 25 years of payments, 1,100 euros after 30 and 1,546 euros after 40. Not even forty years of contributions are enough to exceed the 1,638.72 euros required. In short, exit flexibility depends much less on age than on career length. And that is exactly where Italy has the biggest problem in Europe.
How many years do you work in Italy compared to Europe: 33 versus 37.5
Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical portal, estimates how many years a 15-year-old can expect to spend in the workforce in their lifetime. In 2025 the Union average rose to 37.5 years, 2.3 more than in 2016. Italy stops at 33: four and a half years below the EU average and second to last place overall, ahead of only Romania (32.7) and behind Bulgaria (34.6), Croatia (35.1) and Greece (35.3).
The Netherlands tops the list with 44.0 years, followed by Sweden (43.4) and Denmark (42.6). Compared to 2024, when the Italian indicator was worth 32.8 years, the recovery is just over two months, while the European average grew by three. The gap, therefore, is slowly widening and the gender issue also has something to do with it.
Italian men have an expected working life of 37.3 years, below the European average of 39.5 but not least: Bulgaria (35.9), Romania (36.0), Croatia (36.3) and Luxembourg (37.2) fare worse. Italian women stop at 28.4 years of age, the lowest value in the Union: the only other under thirty is Romania (29.1), followed by Greece (31.8), while the EU average is 35.4.
The result is a gender gap of 8.9 years, the widest in the Twenty-seven, where the average stops at 4.1. For comparison, in Finland the gap is 0.7 years and in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia women stay in the labor market longer than men. And the causes are multiple: later entries into the labor market, lower activity rates and interruptions related to care work. The same mechanism that the OECD identifies as the main cause of gender pension gap.
How much is it worth compared to the salary: in Italy 79% according to the OECD
Just the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in the report Pensions at a Glance 2025 calculates the net replacement rate: the ratio between the net pension and the last net salary, for a worker with a full career starting from the age of 22 and considering only the mandatory schemes. It is the indicator that basically says how much of the salary the pension can replace.
The average of the OECD countries is 63.2%, that of the twenty-seven is 68.3%. Italy stands at 79.0%, among the highest values in the area. Only the Netherlands (96.0%), Portugal (92.7%) and Greece (88.5%) do better. While France (70.0%), Sweden (66.3%) and the United Kingdom (54.2%) remain below. The minimum values are recorded in Ireland (33.7%) and Lithuania (28.2%), where the mandatory public pillar is deliberately reduced and the rest is entrusted to supplementary funds.
Because in the Bel Paese the pension covers a greater share for those who earn more
There is a detail in the OECD table that distinguishes Italy from almost all other countries: on average for the area the replacement rate drops as income rises: 75.2% for those who earn half the average salary, 63.2% for those who earn one, 52.9% for those who earn double that. It is the effect of the redistributive components – minimum pensions, supplements, progressive formulas – which protect the lowest incomes.
In Italy the opposite happens: 70.4% for low incomes, 79.0% for medium incomes, 81.9% for high incomes. The curve goes up instead of down. It is the direct consequence of an almost entirely contributory system, which returns in proportion to what has been paid and contains very little internal redistribution. Those with low wages, involuntary part-time jobs or discontinuous careers do not receive a correction: they receive little because they have paid little. In Denmark, for comparison, the rate goes from 116.7% of low incomes to 63.6% of high incomes.
The Italian paradox: the highest replacement rate for a career that almost no one has
The same ratio quantifies what happens when the working career is shortened. Five years out of the labor market due to unemployment reduces the total pension by 7% on average in the OECD area. Entering five years later and accumulating ten years of unemployment reduces it by 22%. In a pure contributory system like the Italian one, where there are no progressive corrections, those percentages are not reduced.
This is where the 64-year proposal meets its limit. The Italian system promises one of the highest returns in Europe, but on the condition of continuity of work that the country does not produce: 33 years expected in the labor market, 28.4 for women, against the 48 assumed by the model. Discussing whether exit should occur at 64 or 67 affects only one extreme of that distance. The other – when you enter, how long you stay, who doesn’t enter at all – remains out of the debate.
