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As long as retirement is at least partially funded by taxes, population growth matters a great deal.

Nothing a tweak to the parameters (retirement age, pension value net of taxes on pensions) can't fix. Pension "rights" are not immutable physical constants.

Counter-intuitively, in democratic systems, lot of young people means pensioners become a smaller proportion of the electorate: so the cake is notionally bigger but the slice pensioners can claim might end up proportionally smaller due to weakened bargaining power.

> Nothing a tweak to the parameters (retirement age, pension value net of taxes on pensions) can't fix. Pension "rights" are not immutable physical constants.

So what exactly happens to people who reach that age and have no other kind of income and can no longer work?

Same as people who also "can no longer work" under that age? There is no need to give blanket age-based pension rights to fit people to coincidentally help the disabled, who can be supported directly based on actual impairments.

How much does it matter?

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