It is believed that certain workers deserve to retire at an earlier age than people with other occupations. I do support that idea, because the occupation defines one’s life path, affecting every aspect of living conditions. Especially, when it comes to health conditions.
First of all, the occupation is reflected in many aspects of our life already, both directly and indirectly, therefore, having an earlier retirement age based on the occupation is not an unorthodox idea. Job roles usually have a few distinctive properties that affect employees. For instance, working conditions – the working environment, benifits, riks, pay brackets. Depending upon the specific combination of them, people may get social benifits, like tax reliefs or a different tax rate. The latter has been created to reduce the gap between different layers of society, but the difference may exist in other dimensions as well. Hence the conditions may differ significantly, I strongly believe that the retirement age is one of such dimensions.
Secondly, there are a lot of professions that severaly affect living conditions, specifically, they affect the employee health condition. For instance, the charcoal miners – they spent their lives underground. The working conditions makes them breath with the coal dust. As a result, they are slowly dying at work, and after some threshold their health may worsen irreversebly. Furthermore, every day they have to choose between dying from hunger sooner or dying from the working conditions later. That is why they are among the few who should be able to retire at an earlier age.
In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that a lot of aspects of our lives depends upon the occupation. Therefore, the working conditions should be taken into account when it comes to the retirement age, especially when the working conditions are harmful and puts employee’s health in jeopardy.