Age Pension age
Pension age depends on your date of birth, and the Act sets it in four tables — one for men and three covering women — each keyed on a range of birth dates rather than a birth year. The rise finished some years ago, so everybody reaching pension age now takes the same age; the earlier rows remain live law for the people already drawing under them.
The rise is over
Pension age climbed for thirty years and then stopped. Anyone born on or after 1 January 1957 reaches pension age at the same age, and because the youngest person in the row before them passed their own pension age in mid-2023, that has been true of everybody newly reaching it since the start of 2024.
Both schedules end in the same place: anyone born on or after 1 January 1957 reaches pension age at 67 years, and the row that says so is open-ended, so the tables do not run out and there is nothing to work out for a later birth year.
The earlier rows have not been repealed and are not decoration. They are live law for everyone already drawing a pension under them, which is why they are set out in full below rather than collapsed into the single figure that applies to new claims.
Men — s 23(5A)
Before the tables begin: A man born on or before 30 June 1952 reaches pension age when he turns 65 years. That is a stated rule in its own right, not a gap — which is why the row for everyone born earlier is not extrapolated backwards from the first row of the schedule.
Pension age for men
Social Security Act 1991 (Cth) s 23(5A)
| Period during which the person was born | Pension age |
|---|---|
| 1 July 1952 to 31 December 1953 | 65 years and 6 months |
| 1 January 1954 to 30 June 1955 | 66 years |
| 1 July 1955 to 31 December 1956 | 66 years and 6 months |
| On or after 1 January 1957 | 67 years |
Women — s 23(5B), (5C) and (5D)
The women’s schedule runs across three provisions rather than one, because it did two separate jobs: first the equalisation that brought the age up from 60 to 65, then the rise from 65 to 67 that men were making at the same time. They are shown as the two tables the Act states them as.
Before the tables begin: A woman born before 1 July 1935 reaches pension age when she turns 60. That is a stated rule in its own right, not a gap — which is why the row for everyone born earlier is not extrapolated backwards from the first row of the schedule.
Pension age for women — the equalisation to 65
Social Security Act 1991 (Cth) s 23(5C)
| Period during which the person was born | Pension age |
|---|---|
| 1 July 1935 to 31 December 1936 | 60 years and 6 months |
| 1 January 1937 to 30 June 1938 | 61 years |
| 1 July 1938 to 31 December 1939 | 61 years and 6 months |
| 1 January 1940 to 30 June 1941 | 62 years |
| 1 July 1941 to 31 December 1942 | 62 years and 6 months |
| 1 January 1943 to 30 June 1944 | 63 years |
| 1 July 1944 to 31 December 1945 | 63 years and 6 months |
| 1 January 1946 to 30 June 1947 | 64 years |
| 1 July 1947 to 31 December 1948 | 64 years and 6 months |
Pension age for women — the rise to 67
Social Security Act 1991 (Cth) s 23(5D)
| Period during which the person was born | Pension age |
|---|---|
| 1 January 1949 to 30 June 1952 | 65 years |
| 1 July 1952 to 31 December 1953 | 65 years and 6 months |
| 1 January 1954 to 30 June 1955 | 66 years |
| 1 July 1955 to 31 December 1956 | 66 years and 6 months |
| On or after 1 January 1957 | 67 years |
“What is my pension age if I was born in a given year?”
That is the question the tables above answer, but not quite in the form it is usually asked. There is no row for a birth year. Every row is keyed on a range of birth dates, and a single calendar year can straddle two of them — so for most birth years the honest answer is “it depends which part of the year”, and for the years in the middle of the transition it depends on the day.
To use them: take your own date of birth, find the row whose range contains it, and read the age beside it. Read the schedule for your own sex, because the two ran on different timetables for decades. And if your birth date falls on or after the terminal row’s start date, the schedules stop mattering — everyone from that point on reaches pension age at the same age, which is the single figure stated at the top of this page.
Reading a row
Every row is keyed on a range of birth dates, not a birth year, and both dates are inclusive. Someone born on the last day of one row and someone born on the next day are in different rows and reach pension age at ages six months apart, so a table keyed on the year alone would put one of them in the wrong place.
The Act states the ages in whole years and half-years and says nothing about how to apply “six months” to a birth date whose target month is shorter. No month-end convention is stated anywhere in s 23, so none is asserted here. Where a reader’s date falls on that boundary, Services Australia is the authority.