When Is the Best Time to Marry, Have Children, and Retire?

Families, communities, states, and nations are stronger when individuals get married, have children, and retire at the “best age”? Pew Research Center wanted to know what the “best age” is, and Kelsey Dallas reported on the research. 

Pew asked people across 18 mostly middle-income countries for the best age to retire and learned that the magic age is 57.9 years old. Pew reported, “Country averages for the ideal retirement age range from early 50s to early 60s – that is, 52.1 in Columbia to 62.7 in Nigeria.”

Pew also asked about the right age to marry and have children. According to Dallas, “The average answer for the ideal age to get married is 25.9 … and the average answer for having your first child was 26.”

My husband retired at 55 years of age – in the middle of the range. We married earlier – age 22 years – and welcomed our first child later – at age 27 – than the average in the survey.

Pew also asked about the relationship to religion and its affect to people’s answers. “People who say religion is very important in their life tend to suggest marriage and parenthood at a younger age, compared with people who say religion is only somewhat, not too or not at all important to them,” researchers wrote.

You may be interested in how the United States fared in the survey. It was not one of the 18 countries in Pew’s main report, but Pew took “a separate online survey among 3,600 U.S. adults.”

“Anywhere from about a third to half of Americans say there is no best age to achieve these milestones. Among those who say there is a best age, many say it’s idea to get married, have a child and buy a home between the ages of 25 and 34. And 45% of Americans say the best age to retire is in one’s 60s,” Pew found.

I want to remind my readers of posts from this time last year about the success sequence. The success sequence is a formula showing that important life events must be done in a specific order to achieve financial stability and success. That sequence is: (1) obtain at least a high school education, (2) be engaged in higher education or find a full-time job, and (3) wait until marriage to have children. 

Research shows that following the success sequence significantly increases the chances of avoiding poverty. Statistics show that 97% of Millennials who followed the sequence are not poor by their late twenties to early thirties.

The survey and the research show parents should instruct their children about the appropriate time and sequence to get their education, get married, have children, and retire. By doing so, they can strengthen their family, community, state, and nation.