Ah, yes. I stand corrected. I guess my bias was skewed knowing a co-worker who died a week after retirement as well as plenty of folks who never even made it to retirement.I think you've got a math error here.
Suppose everybody retired at 60 and everybody died at 80. If the number of retirees per year is constant, then the "average age of retirees receiving pensions" is 70. But, clearly everybody gets 20 years of benefits before they "croak".
But, of course, mortality isn't that predictable. SPIAs are purchased by people who want to be prepared for the possibility of a very long life.
In that case, break-even based on SPIA amount (at 0% interest) is around 14 years for males and 15 years for females. Assuming the person collected 20 years of COLA pension, IRR is 4.65% for males and 4.19% for females. For fixed annuities, IRR after 20 years is just 1.91% for males and 1.45% for females.