Only men and women in the culturally work-obsessed Japan and South Korea, and the Latin American countries of Mexico and Chile, have a later “average effective” retirement age, OECD data shows. The average effective age of retirement in New Zealand is 69.8 years for men, and 66.4 years for women, the OECD says. WORK TIL YOU DROP “Never,” is septuagenarian farmer John Dickson’s blunt response to when would be his optimal age to stop working. “Working keeps me alive. I get up in the morning, and I have a purpose,” he says. “I have seen so many farmers retire, buy a nice house in town, and get bored because they have nothing to do, and they die.”