Retirement Age Hike?

[Al in Ohio]

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.

[Big_Hitter]

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

[Big_Hitter]

0% interest rate annuities approximate life expectancies and they vary greatly between older and newer mortality tables

[Al in Ohio]

You have to talk in terms of average baseline actuarial age values, the facts if which I stated from current SSA actuarial tables.

[Big_Hitter]

do you have a link to said tables?

or are those the ones used to calculate post 70.5 distributions?

[jon-nyc]

I hate that they call the age at which you receive benefits 'retirement age'. As if living off of savings simply can't be done, even for a few years between your working life and your benefit collection age.

[seraphim]

"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.

[Katsmeow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by seraphim What was the life expectancy in 1936(?) when SS began?

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.

[NanoSour]

I just hope that young people continue to not vote and that the older folks get to elect our "officials". I'm only 49 so my viewpoints my be skewed by my wisdom or lack thereof, but from where I sit, there is plenty of money floating around to give our senior citizens a reasonable standard of living in their mid-60's and beyond. Let's face it, very few employers, either corporate or small business, want a 60+ year old on the payroll. I can certainly understand the reasons behind this. I'm an engineer by trade, but I definitely don't have the desire or energy that a 25-35 year old has. It's just nature taking its course. For many reasons, an employer would be much better off with the younger specimen.

I also subcribe to modern money theory in that we are a sovereign money nation and have no limit on the amount of money that the government can "print". Even if it was limited, I can't see how it's better for a civil society to spend billions and billions of dollars on advanced military equipment that senior military don't want or need, while providing a poverty level existence for our seniors. It's a matter of choice; do we want our 65-85 year old to have some dignity and contribute to our economy, or do we want all the younger workers, whether engineers, programmers, doctors, lawyers, etc; to live a top 2% standard of living on the world stage. When you think about it, that's where all the money is going. To the suburban dream homes with two $40K cars in the garage and $10K annual vacations to the yucutan peninsula. This all boils down to political fanfare and unfortunately people just don't get it.

There is so much more that I could add, but in the interest of brevity, I'll stop here.

[Animorph]

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.

[ERhoosier]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chuckanut 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.

Age discrimination law enforcement?

[ziggy29]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Animorph 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.

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.

[donheff]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al in Ohio You have to talk in terms of average baseline actuarial age values, the facts if which I stated from current SSA actuarial tables.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Big_Hitter 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

Quote:

Originally Posted by seraphim "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.

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.

__________________

[NanoSour]

This argument about lower numbers of worker supporting greater numbers of elderly/retirees is inconsequential.

DIAGRAMS & DOLLARS: modern money illustrated (Part 1) | New Economic Perspectives

DIAGRAMS & DOLLARS: modern money illustrated (Part 2) | New Economic Perspectives

After reading these you should see this is nothing more than a decision our elected politicians make on how they will spend the monopoly money. Nothing to do with life expectancies, SS tax rates, etc. All that is distraction.

[Animorph]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziggy29 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.

As I said before, if SS keeps making benefits available anywhere from 62 to 70, changing the "retirement age" has nearly the same effect as simply raising or lowering the benefit amount. It's just called something else that sounds a little better. And age is just a red herring in that case.

Certainly we could make retiring early more or less attractive by changing the age 62 limit or biasing the early benefits a little higher.

[GrayHare]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katsmeow 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.

Informative post, Katsmeow, thanks, I missed it when you initially posted it. OK, so life expectancy once SS payments begin has risen since the 1940s, but by only a few years.