[quote=AN][quote=SK in CV][quote=AN][quote=SK in CV]You totally missed my point. Total life expectancy is immaterial. Life expectancy at retirement age is what’s important. I think that number is 7 years higher now than it was when SS started.[/quote]Data?
Here’s the full retirement age for SS: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/retire2/agereduction.htm. Are you saying your generation total life expectancy is only a few months to <2 years higher than your parents', since according to SS's full retirement age, that's how much older you'd have to be to reach full retirement age. Yet, over the last 50 years, life expectance have gone up 9 years.[/quote]
I may have overstated it.
I can't quickly come up with newer numbers, but direct from the SSA:
Life expectancy at age 65 in 1940 - Males 12.7 Females 14.7
Life expectancy at age 65 in 1990 - Males 15.3 Females 19.6
I doubt life expectancy has increased any faster over the last couple decades, so I'm guessing the increase overall is probably closer to 6 years now.
And you continue to ignore the important number. It is not total life expectancy. It is life expectancy AFTER retirement benefits begin.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/lifeexpect.html%5B/quote%5D
Uh, unless math eludes me, life expectancy after retirement = total life expectancy - retirement age, no? If that's the case, it's it as simple as finding out what life expectancy is, then subtract the full retirement age?
Also, keep in mind medical advances has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. We're talking about the ability to completely regrow human parts from you own stem cell and do the surgery. With your own DNA, the likely hood of rejection is minimal, if at all. Then, there's also the fact that we're pretty close to finding the cure to AIDS. We're working hard to find a cure to cancer. Then there's nano-tech that doesn't exist 20 years ago and it will only get better 20 years from now. So, yes, I expect us to live much much longer.[/quote]
No. What SK is trying to say is that "average life expectancy" means nothing when talking about retirement or SS. The vast majority of increases in life expectancy came decades ago and applied, almost entirely, to young people. The increases in life expectancy were largely due to vaccines, antibiotics, hygiene, infant and maternal care (so very many women and children died around childbirth back then), OSHA regulations/reduction in accidental deaths at work, etc.
IOW, the vast majority of the increases in life expectancy apply mostly to the front end of life, not the back end where it would have more of an effect on SS/retirement plans.
Older people of today are not living 9 years longer than *older people* of 50-ish years ago. In my family, the trend is decidedly down over the generations, but we have far, far fewer deaths at young ages than my ancestors did...like when a single sickness would often wipe out half of the kids in a single year.
......
To clarify a bit more, in your suggestion here:
…life expectancy after retirement = total life expectancy – retirement age, no? If that’s the case, it’s it as simple as finding out what life expectancy is, then subtract the full retirement age?
It confuses “total life expectancy – retirement age” with “life expectancy at the age of retirement.” Those are two different things, even though they sound similar. The first doesn’t account for the fact that “total life expectancy” is affected by increases in life expectancy at birth; or for those in their twenties, thirties, etc.
