Like much of Cuba’s workforce, Alfredo Congas is going gray.
The chain-smoking 61-year-old retired last March after 42 years as a hotel doorman and rum-company driver. Now he’s back working 12-hour shifts as a security guard to supplement his minuscule pension.
“I’m here without a cent in my pocket,” said Congas, whose new job brings his total income — pension plus paycheck — to the equivalent of US$23.45 a month, about US$4 more than the average state wage.
LIVING IN POVERTY
Sweeping poverty forces most of Cuba’s 2.2 million retirees to get new jobs that enable them to keep a steady income and supplement their pensions. Many barely scrape by, wandering the streets selling peanuts and newspapers or guarding parked cars at hotels for tourists’ change.
Now even that is harder to do. Faced with an aging population and a life expectancy of 77.3 years, nearly the same as the US, Cuba’s government has raised the retirement threshold by five years, to 60 for women and 65 for men, delaying the second jobs many have counted on to make ends meet in their old age.
About 90 percent of Cubans have government jobs, and now both sexes must work at least 30 years, not 25, to get a full pension.
“Retirement in Cuba was already no picnic. Now it’s more complicated,” said Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a state-trained economist turned political dissident.
AGING POPULATION
The overhaul, to be fully phased in by 2015, means Cuba’s retirement age will exceed Latin America’s average of 59 for women and 62 for men, said Carmelo Mesa-Lago, an expert on the Cuban economy at the University of Pittsburgh.
The island’s population is aging faster than the rest of the region — some 17 percent will be 60 or older by next year, compared with 9 percent across Latin America, UN data show.
A quarter of Cubans will top 60 by 2025, a point the rest of the region won’t reach until 2050.
As Cuba’s workforce shrinks, the ratio of workers to retirees has narrowed from seven-to-one in 1970 to three-to-one. Had the country not raised its retirement age, the ratio would have been two-to-one by 2025, the government said.
BIGGER PENSIONS
State pensions, though small, were once enough to live on in this communist country, where housing and health care are free and the government subsidizes food, utilities and transportation.
The minimum monthly pension was worth about US$92 in 1989. Adjusted for inflation, it is now the equivalent of US$9.50.
Much of what the government saves by delaying retirement, it will dole out in bigger pensions. Payments are rising to 60 percent of an employee’s peak five years of earnings, from 50 percent. Workers also earn an additional 2 percent for each year on the job after 25 years.
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