What was the life expectancy in 1936(?) when SS began?
If they increase the retirement age they also need to 1.) adjust traditional working systems to allow older people to continue working - especially true in the more physical jobs, and 2.) toughen up enforcement of age discrimination laws. Otherwise they will simply transfer the payments from the SS system to the welfare systems.
Of course longer life expectancy also means more people in retirement. We need to also consider the number of people simply living to 65 or whatever. That bottom of the age range is what will be soaking up most of the benefits, since there are fewer and fewer people at the older ages. The shape of that curve will make a difference in the cost of benefits.
You have to talk in terms of average baseline actuarial age values, the facts if which I stated from current SSA actuarial tables.
first of all, life expectancy depends on current age, it's not the same number for everyone
second of all, it's not thrown around callously, it's fact - you may want to check out the latest mortality study done by the society of actuaries at www.soa.org for some light reading
IMO, we need to move away from the age 65 paradigm, sooner rather than later
As I have posted in other threads, average life expectancy numbers make it sound like people you know today are living 40+ years longer than people you might have met in 1900. But that is not accurate unless you think of people you might have met as including new born babies. Babies born today are much likelier to live than babies born in 1900. But once you get through childhood you can expect maybe twelve or thirteen more years. And if you reach that magical age of 60 like many of us here you can expect to live 6 or 7 more years than your 1900 peer. Here is a link to a chart that shows life expectancy by age over the years. The key for social security is life expectancy at the age of retirement coupled with the population of working stiffs vs retirees. There are certainly problems with SS but everyone who has analyzed it has found that we are facing something like a 25% shortfall. Chained CPI would help a bit. Extending the top end for contributions would help more. Adding in a change to 68 or 70 for full retirement and maybe 64 for early retirement would solve it. It doesn't make sense to move the early retirement age up a lot because despite the hoopla about life expectancy there are still a ton of unhealthy (but not totally disabled) people who struggle to work in their 60s. In fact, with obesity and diabetes that problem may be getting worse rather than better."The statement " we are living a lot longer than ever " gets tossed around quite calously these days. Over 50 years ago the life expectany of a man in 1960 was 66.6 and now its 76 in the US for a man. Thats signifigant, but not huge. If full SS retirement payments are geared to pay out at 67 now that accounts for a 10 year retirement before death. In 1960 you would have died first! Obviously major adjustments have been made, hence the health of SS is not bad, but some adjustments to perhaps how COLA is factored need to be made to keep it sustainable beyond 2033."
What was the life expectancy in 1936(?) when SS began?
Seems like your statement above argues the age for receiving full benefits should be 75.
Unfortunately, most people expect SS to support them in their old age. That doesn't seem possible.
The bottom line is that there aren't enough jobs to go around already for people *under* 65. (And if you qualify that with "good" jobs, even fewer still.) And when you are over about 50 (40 in some industries), your job prospects already suck even more in terms of keeping your job and finding a new one if you lose it.
As the population grows AND gets older, and the growth rate of decent jobs remains flat to negative, we will necessarily have tough choices -- either raise the retirement age because the working people can't afford the higher cost of supporting more retirees..... or *lower* the age because we need to get more people out of the work force, and perhaps reducing the number of people who *need* jobs could help the wage stagnation problem.
These are both legitimate concerns, but unfortunately they seem to work against each other.
See post 7 where I quote some information from SS itself.
I short, in 70 years the increase in 70 years the increase in life expectancy for 65 year olds has only been 5 years for males and 5.6 years for females.