byThe widespread tendency in Brazil for men to remarry women several decades younger–called the “Viagra effect”–is undermining the country’s pension system, researchers warned Tuesday.
The report, by Brazil’s National Social Security Institute, showed that a trend of men in their 60s marrying women half their age was leaving a big pool of young widows collecting benefits for much longer than anticipated.
“The social security system was planned so that the wife receives her husband’s pension for only 15 years or so. With growing life expectancy and remarriages with much younger women, benefits today stretch out over 35 years,” said the author of the study, Paulo Tafner.
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