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-yougo 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 normal retirement 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 normal retirement age. This has increased the effective retirement age for both men and women. 

In 2021, an actual retirement age for men was 64.8 years and for women – 60.6 years