[quote=davelj]
And yet the age at which benefits begin has, for all intents and purposes, not been changed much.
[/quote]
I think the important point here is that birth to death life expectancy isn’t, by itself, the least bit meaningful in comparing benefits between 1935 and now. Life expectancy at age 60 (or maybe better, if available would be at age 65.)
I’ve seen a whole lot of stats that isolated the change in life expectancy at age 60, and most of them (depending on which cross-tab, if any, is deemed most important) add somewhere between 5-8 years to life expectancy. Three years has been added to to normal retirement age, so while the entire delta hasn’t been adressed, a significant portion of it has.
