This model has since been adopted en masse and most countries now have a retirement age, after which workers can claim benefits paid through years of their work.

However, modern-day retirement is much more than just finances. Wealth management company Natixis analyzed 44 nations on four main categories affecting the ability for their residents to retire well in the 2023 Global Retirement Index. Each category has subindices, from which they averaged scores out of 100 to create this ranking.

The categories are:

Health: Per capita spend on healthcare, life expectancy, and non-insured health spend.

Quality of Life: Happiness levels, water and sanitation, air quality, environment, and biodiversity.

Material Well-being: Per capita income, income equality, and employment levels.

Retirement Finances: Government debt, old-age dependency, interest rates, inflation, governance, taxes, and bank non-performing loans.

?? This index quantifies general retirement welfare in a country and does not account for countries which are retirement destinations—usually because of lower costs of living or better weather.

So, with one-third of the world expected to be 65 and older by 2050, how are countries stacking up against each other when it comes to creating supportive environments for retirement?

Of the countries analyzed for the best retirement conditions, Visual Capitalist's Pallavi Rao and Niccolo Conte created the graphic below to highlight the top 25.

What Are the Best Countries for Retirement?

Norway ranks first as the best country for retirement in this study, helped by top scores in health and material well-being.

For health metrics, Norway was one of the few countries to see life expectancy improve over the pandemic. It now sits at 83.3 years at birth, and is one of the highest rates in the world. This is in contrast to many other countries in the index (Canada, Austria, the U.S.) that saw life expectancies drop recently due to the higher mortality rate during the pandemic.