Would it make sense to associate retirement age with expected longevity?
Is the preston curve a valid enough mathematical construct to base policy on?
What policy are you talking about. Given the curve uses GDP, I presume the data points are countries. Countries with higher GDP have higher life expectancies. As policy is likely to be set a a country level, do you mean wealthier countries should have later retirements? Why? Are you thinking wealth will be transferred from those countries to poorer countries to help them allow earlier retirement? I can’t see that happening.
The data says nothing about people with higher income living longer within the same country. (I’m sure they tend to, but this data says nothing about that.) So you can’t use this data to say those with higher incomes should get lower benefits.
Not necessarily this data, but as you said, more representative or specific to the population or country involved. This was sparked by JE Bush’s plank to delay SS benefits to age 70. The article I was reading quoted an opponent of this plank as saying roughly that that first check would come on their deathbed.
Just wondering if looking at the retirement age for SS in terms of longevity would benefit anyone, or the solvency of the system, or have any foreseeable implications long term.
When the system was set up, the “normal retirement age” when benefits commenced was very close to the expected age of death.
Since the 1930s US life expectancy has gone up 20ish years. The “normal retirement age” hasn’t gone up yet, but due to legislation 20 years ago will start going up slowly a few years from now. IOW, SS’s rules have fallen far behind the changes in life expectancy.
*If *somebody wanted to adjust the SS system to better reflect changes in national life expectancy a truly vast amount of benefits would be A) taken away from folks currently expecting or receiving them or B) restore the system to a more sound financial footing. Whether A or B is the truth depends on which political position you want to take on the issue.
SS is indexed to inflation. It probably ought to be indexed to national life expectancy. Subject to the caveat that many public health officials think that US longevity may be close to peaking and all the diabetes ridden overweight children of today will be dying **en masse **in their 50s. If that’s true and we enshrine longevity-based SS, we might see the retirement age going down in the 2030s.
The US is already playing with retirement age.
It used to be possible to retire at 55 and receive 1/2 of full retirement benefits. It was raised to 62 just as Boomers started to hit 55 - it went up right about he time those born in 1947 reached 55. Way ahead of the bulk of Boomers.
As a matter of political survival, Boomers will get full benefits starting at 65 and remaining at current levels until the last of us are dead. Crossing old people is political suicide.
The GOP wants to start the “SS at 70” discussion. Given their problems with women, blacks, Hispanics. and people left of Attila, you’d think they would hold off pissing off the old.
Not true. They’re already raised “full retirement age”. For those boomers born between 1943 and 1954, full retirement age is 66.
Full retirement at 70 is perhaps fine for people like me who have desk jobs (and are more likely to vote Republican.) Full retirement at 70 for those doing manual labor is apt to be quite a bit tougher.
Moderator Action
While the mathematics involved can be factually cited, the application to retirement gets into opinion and debate, especially as other less factual ideas also go into the determination of retirement age. I’m not seeing enough of a debate here for GD, so let’s try IMHO for now.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
I missed that.
I was on SS disability and got a note that, since I had turned 65, the benefits would now be considered retirement, not disability.
I just turned 66 2 weeks ago.
I didn’t even get the usual ‘Happy Birthday’ emails. Sniff, nobody cares about us old people, sniff…
More accurately, normal retirement age was set closer to life expectancy (as opposed to expected age at death, which measures expected years remaining at various ages) in 1937 than today. The effect on SSI, however, is very little.
The life expectancy figures you seem to have used are the number of years that an infant born in a particular year could expect to live and includes in the average deaths at all ages. in 1937, the year SSI was started, the life expectancy for a male child was 67years - close to the retirement age of 65 - but infant mortality was 8.59%. Those infant deaths pull the average down significantly. For those who made it through their first year, life expectancy jumped to 73 years. At 18 years old, the normal age when one starts paying into SSI, that male could expect to live about 56 more years to age 74. Contrast to the year 2000 (latest year SSI records I could find), when an 18 year old could expect an additional 63 years to age 81 - a difference of 8 years. It’s that 8 year difference that affects SSI, not the 13 year difference counted from from birth.
Born late 60s, my full retirement age is listed at 67.
Is that the current highest?