most early retirements are health related
Is 62 "early"?
Do you have any data to back up that statement, or is it a guess?
most early retirements are health related
The article is not as bad as it seems. What happens is that there's a 2% jump in male mortality at 62.
And statistics also show that 10% of males retire when they reach 62.
Is 62 "early"?
Do you have any data to back up that statement, or is it a guess?
Once again pot is getting a bad rap. When you see somebody driving badly, speeding and weaving, that's booze.
You weren't drunk enough if you knew you were accident prone!
If there is not a 2% mortality bump at 65/66, then one needs to look further. The reason may be that people who do not need/want to take at 62 can take at any age after that. The distribution may be more evenly spread out from 63 to 70, hence no discernible mortality bump.OH MY GOD!! Two percent increase in mortality rates!! Aaaaaahh!!
(I'm not being sarcastic towards you, NW; thanks for taking the time to read the article.)
Ok, so that's one possible explanation of the 2% increase -- although there would be others, such as random sample variation in whatever data set they're looking at. But we know retirement (especially involuntary retirement) can be stressful for people, so it's possible.
One way to investigate would be to determine if you saw a similar spike at 65 or 66 (or whatever the main retirement age is for most men). If not, then the theory goes down the drain. I would've thought the study authors would have pointed that out, if it were present in the data, so my assumption is that it wasn't.
Thanks for posting that link (accessible without a paid subscription). For those interested, here is the published study itself.OK, I was able to read the article as it is reposted on another Web site. See: Is Social Security to blame for so many men dying at 62? | Fox News.
The article is not as bad as it seems. What happens is that there's a 2% jump in male mortality at 62. And statistics also show that 10% of males retire when they reach 62.
“If you don’t go to work, you have more hours of the day to be driving around,” the professor said.
“Medical literature suggests when older men are more sedentary, they’re more likely to be at risk for infection. When they lose their jobs, they increase their smoking rate, linked to the types of deaths we see such as COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] or respiratory illness.”
The author said she was not advising people to not retire, but rather to maintain their health. Who can argue with that?
Once again pot is getting a bad rap. When you see somebody driving badly, speeding and weaving, that's booze. When you see somebody driving slow in the right lane, that's pot. Hmmm...down here in FL we mostly have people driving slow in the left lane. I guess that's old age.
62 is considered early
it was a question on an actuarial exam so it has to be true
(yes there is data, lots of it)
Look at the latest mortality study by the society of actuaries. Annuitants have higher rates of mortality than non annuitants of the same age. Millions of life years of data were analyzed in developing these rates. Not sure what else you need to see.Well that clears it up...
If there is not a 2% mortality bump at 65/66, then one needs to look further. The reason may be that people who do not need/want to take at 62 can take at any age after that. The distribution may be more evenly spread out from 63 to 70, hence no discernible mortality bump.
We do not know if there's a spike of people retiring at 65/66 or not. That has to be looked at, then compared with the presence or lack of mortality increase at that age.I'm not getting why you'd see a spike at 62 but not 65/66. If retirement is the reason for the spike in mortality, then you ought to see a spike at 65/66. I think the lack of a spike at 65 would be pretty clear evidence that retirement does not cause increased mortality.
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Thanks for posting that link (accessible without a paid subscription). For those interested, here is the published study itself.
She seems to have no idea how retirees actually spend their time. How many of us drive aimlessly around? I certainly don't.
What a waste of money ($45,000 grant!) her 'research' was.
1) More than of 40% SS recipients claim early at 62. However, only 1/10 of workers stop working at 62. This means the majority of 62-year-old SS recipients continues to work.
2) For the people who delay SS benefits past 62, their age at eventual SS claim is more spread out between 62 and 70. There's a slight bunch up at 65 and 66, but it is much less significant than the concentration at 62.
4) The article said that "the estimated increase is largest for unmarried males and males with low education levels...
5) The article cited other studies that show "...mortality risks increase by over 50% in the year following a layoff", and "studies examining involuntary job loss in Europe find mortality increases of 30–80% in the first year after job loss".
4) ...The causes of death with the clearest increases at age 62 are traffic accidents and two lung-related conditions: COPD and lung cancer...there is also suggestive evidence that males engage in more unhealthy behaviors once they retire"[/I].
I wonder what she means by "unhealthy behaviours". Drugs? Alcohol? Hang gliding? Unprotected casual sex? Knife fights?4) The article said that "there is also suggestive evidence that males engage in more unhealthy behaviors once they retire".
So 90% of people they're looking at are not retired, yet the researchers making inferences about retirement. That's pretty speculative.
To me, the findings suggest a link between mortality and financial stress, not mortality and retirement. If 90% of the people drawing SS at 62 are continuing to work, they are probably doing it because they need the money now rather than later. To me, that suggests that financial stress, rather than retirement, may be the culprit...
They need more personal data about the retirees. It looks like what they have access to are just the mortality statistics and the SS claimant data. SS agency knows how many workers claim early, and of those, who continue to work after 62.I think any decent study needs to make a distinction between people who retired because they wanted to vs. people who retired because they had to.
I thought more unhealthy behaviors were the REASON to retire!
But seriously, if you're developing COPD and lung cancer, or at risk of doing so, that's a pretty rational reason to start collecting as soon as you can. It looks like that's the cause, not an effect...
If 40% of the workers claim SS at 62, and if only 10% of them stop working, meaning 4% of the workers stop working at 62, and that is enough to bump up the mortality risk by 20%, that makes it even more significant.