Men and women are living longer, and while more women have superannuation, many still fall outside the superannuation guarantee safety net, a new report has found.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Gender Indicators report found a boy born in 2009 could expect to live, on average, to 79, while a girl could expect to live to 84.
While male longevity lags female longevity, over the decade to 2009, life expectancy at birth for males increased more quickly (up 2.7 years) than for females (up 1.9 years).
Women aged 65 in 2009 could expect to live another 21.8 years, up from 20.4 years in 2000, while men aged 65 could expect to live another 18.7 years in 2009 compared to 16.8 years in 2000.
Increases in life expectancy are due to improvements in aged-care management and a decline in deaths from chronic conditions, such as heart disease, due to medical advances, improvements in diet and lower rates of smoking.
Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) chief executive Pauline Vamos said given people were living longer, they needed to ensure some of their assets were invested in growth classes following retirement.
"People need to understand that they still need to have some kind of assets that are growing and that the asset will work for them once they have stopped working," Vamos said.
"Share markets lately have been a bit scary for retirees, but we know that over the longer term they are better off."
Colonial First State executive manager of technical services Deborah Wixted said the overall goal for most people when they retired should be to ensure their superannuation benefit, whichever way it was taken, was able to provide an ongoing income for what might be a considerable time.
"Many retirees choose to take their super as a pension, as this can be a tax-effective and relatively simple manner to manage their money in a way that can provide a regular payment," Wixted said.
"If the pension is an account-based pension, they are still able to choose how it will be invested."
She said assets should be allocated so retirees achieved "some level of capital growth so that the future income the retirement capital produces keeps pace with the retiree's cost of living".
The ABS report showed while men were increasingly deriving their retirement income from super, women were not.
The proportion of women relying on superannuation for their retirement income was around 9 per cent for the five years to 30 June 2008, compared to 19.3 per cent for men as at 2007/08, up from 16.7 per cent in 2003/04.
However, there was a big drop in the proportion of women not covered by super (27 per cent in 2007, down from 38 per cent in 2000). That compares to 19.4 per cent of men not covered by superannuation in 2007, down from 25.8 per cent in 2000.
Median super balances also highlight huge shortfalls. In 2007, the period for which the latest figures are given, women had a median superannuation balance of just $18,489 compared to $31,252 for men.
Vamos said the federal government needed to make changes to boost women's super coverage.
"We have been agitating for some time for the government to remove the $450 threshold for superannuation guarantee payments. A lot of women are part-time workers and are not covered by superannuation because they earn less than $450 a month, and removing this threshold would help women, in particular, save more superannuation," she said.
"Other rules also preclude women. Nannies, for example, who are mostly women, are excluded from the superannuation guarantee."
Under superannuation laws, employees paid to do work of a domestic or private nature and who work 30 hours or less a week are not eligible for the superannuation guarantee. "Such policies discriminate against women," Vamos said.
