Old-age pensions

The old-age pension system reform came into force on 1 January 1999 under the Act of 13 October 1998 on the social insurance system.

Since then, two old-age pension schemes have been operating in parallel in Poland:
1) the old pension scheme – for persons born before 1 January 1949, in which ZUS calculates the old-age pension according to the rules from before 1999,
2) the new pension scheme – for persons born after 31 December 1948, in which ZUS calculates the old-age pension according to the new rules.

Persons born between 1 January 1949 and 31 December 1968 could choose:

• whether they preferred to remain in the pre-1999 pension system, i.e. the pay-as-you-go model, in which the contributions of economically active persons are earmarked for old-age pension payments and the value of those contributions is credited to individual accounts at the Social Insurance Institution,
• or they wanted to join the new pension scheme, which combines a pay-as-you-go model with a funded model, where contributions are collected both in the Social Insurance Fund and in an Open Pension Fund.

The nretirement age amounted to:

• for women – 60 years,
• for men – 65 years.

The new rules for obtaining the right to an old-age pension have significantly reduced the right to draw a pension at an age lower than the retirement age.

In 2023, the actual average age of retirement for men was 65 years and for women – 60.7 years.