Work · Two-part direct question · Band 7
Should the Retirement Age Be Raised?
The question, a model answer written to the band 7 descriptors, why it scores that band against the 4 official criteria, topic vocabulary, and a common mistake to avoid.
Two-part direct question
Many countries are considering raising the official retirement age as life expectancy increases. Do you think this is a fair solution, and what alternative measures could governments consider to address the costs of an ageing population? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
Model answer (band 7)
Written to the band 7 descriptors, not by a real examiner. Read it for structure and language, then write your own in your own words. Examiners can tell a memorised essay from an original one.
Raising the retirement age is a logical response to longer life expectancy, but I believe it is only a partially fair solution, since it affects different workers very unevenly, and governments should pair it with alternative measures rather than relying on it alone.
The fairness concern centres on the type of work people do. A raised retirement age is relatively manageable for someone in an office job, where physical demands are minimal, but far harder for someone in physically demanding manual labour, such as construction, whose body may simply be unable to continue safely at sixty-five or seventy. Treating all workers identically, regardless of how physically taxing their career has been, risks placing the greatest burden on exactly the people with the least financial cushion to absorb it, since manual labourers are often also among the lowest paid.
Alternative measures could spread the cost more fairly. Encouraging higher workforce participation among younger demographics, including better childcare support that allows more parents to work full-time, would expand the tax base funding pensions without placing the entire adjustment on older workers. Governments could also introduce flexible, graduated retirement, allowing people in physically demanding jobs to reduce their hours gradually rather than working full-time until a single fixed cut-off age, which better reflects how fatigue and physical capacity actually change over a working life. Immigration policies that attract working-age migrants can further ease the ratio of workers to retirees that underlies much of this funding pressure in the first place.
In conclusion, raising the retirement age is a reasonable but blunt tool, and combining it with graduated retirement and expanded workforce participation would produce a fairer, more sustainable outcome overall.
Why this answer scores band 7
Mapped to the 4 official IELTS Writing criteria.
- Task Response: both parts (is it fair, what alternatives exist) are answered explicitly with well-developed, specific reasoning for each.
- Coherence and Cohesion: a clear fairness-then-alternatives structure, with strong internal logic connecting each idea to the overall argument.
- Lexical Resource: precise demographic and economic vocabulary ('workforce participation', 'tax base', 'graduated retirement') used accurately and naturally.
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy: sustained complex sentence structures, including comparatives and conditional clauses, with very few errors.
Useful vocabulary & collocations
Phrases used in the model answer that lift Lexical Resource naturally.
Common mistake on this type of question
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