Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto says he will expand a supplementary pension program by lowering the eligibility age to 65.

The program currently applies to people 70 and over and gives them a payment of about 500 pesos ($39) a month.

The expansion will add about 2.5 million people to the approximately 5.6 million Mexicans now getting benefits.

Mexico's government said Thursday that the monthly benefit will be available to all eligible adults by the end of this year. It added that the monthly stipend will be increased to 525 pesos ($41).

Mexico instituted privately managed, joint-contribution pension accounts in the late 1990s, but many of today's elderly had already stopped working by that time.