1 in 5 Canadians don't plan to retire: StatsCan

(CBC) - Twenty per cent of Canadians do not intend to retire at all, a Statistics Canada publication suggests.

Many other Canadians who took early retirement went back to work because they needed money, according to "New Frontiers of Research on Retirement", a 458-page compilation of scientific papers and surveys released by the agency on Monday.

Non-standard work arrangements such as contract and casual work "will worsen the financial security of future retirees" because they don't have access to workplace pension plans, Statistics Canada said in a news release announcing the publication.

The agency also found said older immigrants and women living alone were more likely to lack adequate pensions and continue working past 65, the traditional age when people expect to retire.

But even workers with pension plans or RRSPs have delayed their departure or are unsure when they will be able to retire because of monetary worries, the agency said.

Their financial security was undermined by drops in investment returns, such as the high- tech stock-market crash of 2000, which pushed some pension plans into deficits and reduced the value of many RRSPs.

The oldest baby boomers turn 60 in 2006. Statistics Canada said that as the boomers begin to retire, cultural and institutional changes will follow.

As people begin to move back and forth between work and retirement, the rules governing access to pensions are changing, Leroy Stone of Statistics Canada's unpaid work analysis division told CBC News Online.

And the increasing number of women retiring with larger-than-ever pensions is having a major influence.

Today's female retirees will be the first group of women who have worked for most of their adult lives. They will start their retirement with far higher pensions than their grandmothers could ever have imagined.

The proportion of couples in which the woman contributed more than 40 per cent of the family income more than doubled to 43 per cent in 2000, compared with 1980.

Stone said the change will complicate retirement decisions for couples.

"They need to trade off their interests and aspirations," Stone said.

© the CBC, 2006