Clear Accounts / With or without a pension, at what age do we retire?

Cuentas Claras, the weekly column by Mauricio Galindo, economics editor of EL TIEMPO, offers interesting figures surrounding the news that occurred in the last seven days.

Among OECD countries, the actual age (not the pension age) at which people retire from work is, on average, 63.1 years for women and 64.4 for men.

In Colombia, it's lower for women but much higher for men: women retire, on average, at 60.7 years of age, and men at 67.8 years of age. In two decades, the actual retirement age has risen across the OECD as a whole, but it has fallen in Colombia.

According to the World Bank, there are still 666 million people on the planet without access to electricity. They represent 8 percent of the world's population, and 85 percent of them live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Across the globe, 92 percent of people have access to electricity, and in Colombia, 98.7 percent. In South Sudan, the figure is only 5.4 percent. In the region, Colombia surpasses Peru, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, and Haiti.

In seven decades, the highest food prices in the world were recorded in March 2022, at the beginning of the war with Ukraine, according to the FAO index. Since then, they have dropped 24 percent and remain expensive, 18 percent above the average level recorded since 2006.

Furthermore, they are 77 percent higher than the historic lows in 1987 and 2000. The index takes into account oils, meats, dairy products, cereals and sugar.

The closure of slaughterhouses in 473 municipalities had no impact on deforestation, but it did lead to the withdrawal of small farms from business due to increased transportation costs.

This is shown by research by Santiago Saavedra (Universidad del Rosario) and Fanny Moffette (University of Quebec).

Large farms gained 10 percent in market share. There were increases in illnesses due to more informal activity.