A friend now two years over the legal retirement age of 63 recently told me that he has worked non-stop for 42 years, apart from annual, medical and other essential leave. Like many of his generation, it was taken for granted that one would work till retirement age. But now, they have been confronted by the reality that people are living longer, and he and many of his cohort have continued to work, though on re-employment terms.

The thing is, when he started out in the workforce in 1982, the unofficial age of retirement was 55, the same age when one could start withdrawing from the Central Provident Fund, and he was looking at about 30 years of work. But in that year, the life expectancy was 70.2 years for men in Singapore, so the expectation was that retirement would last about 15 years.