Every year or so a new proposal comes out to address
Social Security funding issues by raising the eligibility age for the program
to acknowledge the increases in life expectancy that have occurred since the
program was initiated. One of the more
recent came from James M. Stone in his book Five Easy Theses. He provided this comment on the subject.
“….a more complete repair is
available if Congress would add to the enabling legislation a provision that it
might have included from the start if the rapid increases in life expectancy
had been foreseen. It is hard to believe
that an ever-lengthening period of benefit collection was either desired or
expected by Social Security’s drafters, and it is harder still to justify that
feature now. Scientists tell me that we
should see life expectancy continue to rise over time, then eventually flatten
out as expected life spans approach one hundred.”
This is the conventional wisdom with regard to
longevity. Although there are some who
think that life may one day be extended indefinitely, little is said about the
possibility that life expectancy could peak and then turn downward. Nevertheless, some evidence is accumulating
that seems to indicate that something like that might be beginning to happen. In addition, it is dangerous for people to
perform analyses on diverse populations using average numbers. Longevity turns out to depend on a number of
factors such as wealth, culture (lifestyle), gender, and geography.
This source
provides the following longevity data for the US population.
The first thing to realize is that the biggest leverage
on average numbers arises from the mortality rates of children. Much of the dramatic rise in longevity over
past decades came from advances that lowered child mortality rather than
advances that allowed adults to live longer.
What is of interest for programs such as Social Security is the
longevity of people when they reach age 65.
This longevity is usually expressed as a life expectancy number rather than
as years left to live. Given that
preamble, average life expectancy at birth for the US population increased by 10.3
years between 1950 and 2009. However,
the number was only 5.3 years for those aged 65.
One might still consider 5.3 years a large increase that
must be dealt with. Now consider life
expectancy as a function of income. Katelin
P. Isaacs and Sharmila Choudhury have produced The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income: Recent Evidence and Implications for the Social Security Retirement Age which included the
following chart.
This looks at two populations, one born in 1920 and the
other in 1940. They would respectively
be aged 97 and 77 today. Data are
presented for both males and females. The
fact that there is a life expectancy variation based on income is obvious. This has been known for some time, but what
might be less obvious is that the difference between the wealthy and the poor
is increasing dramatically over time.
For the 1920 cohort the difference between the lowest and highest
incomes was 5.0 years. For the 1960
cohort, after a mere 20 years, the difference has increased to 12.0 years. The comparable numbers for females are 3.7
years and 10.1 years. Something rather
significant has occurred to produce those results in a 20-year time period.
Also consider that the Social Security program was
designed to be most protective of the lower income people. They receive more in retirement income than
deserved on a purely actuarial basis while the higher income people receive
less. Consequently, the lowest income
people are the most affected by any attempt to increase the retirement
age. In fact the longevity of the
poorest people has hardly changed at all over that 20 year period. For lowest income males the increase was a
mere 1.7 years, and for females there was no increase at all.
Can one still justify the claim that increasing average
life expectancies are driving a need to increase the retirement eligibility
age? And if your conclusion is yes, what
value would you use. Remember that you
are still using averages by income, what about variations by region? Yes there is a huge variation in longevity
depending on the location within the US.
This source provides
longevity, in terms of years to death, by county at age 50 for both men and
women.
Note that
longevity can vary by as much as 10 years depending on where one lives. There are locations where the life expectancy
at birth is barely equal to the current Social Security retirement age. Is it fair to those citizens to increase that
age?
There are perhaps more troubling developments that must
also be considered. Can we really expect
the population to continue to have increasing longevity? Data are beginning to accumulate that cast
doubt on that cherished expectation. In
2012, Sabrina Tavernise published a New
York Times article titled Life Spans Shrink for Least-Educated Whites in the U.S. By “least educated” was meant those without a
high school diploma. This decrease in
longevity only occurred in whites. It
was absent for Hispanics and blacks.
Therein resides a clue.
In 2015, Anne Case and Angus Deaton produced Rising
morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the
21st century. They demonstrate that the mortality rate has been rising for non-Hispanic
whites in the US, an effect that is not seen for Hispanics. Nor is such an effect seen in any of the
other advanced countries. The
authors also conclude that education is a critical factor in the level of
mortality. All the rise in mortality
comes from the cohort with a high school degree or less. Those with some college education but no
degree have slightly decreased mortality.
For those with a college degree or post-graduate education the mortality
rate has continued to drop. Note that
the data presented by Tavernise was based on those without a high school
diploma, a much smaller group.
Much of the increase in
mortality comes from bad lifestyle choices.
Increases in drug use (poisoning) and alcohol abuse are indicated as
major contributors, along with a greater number of suicides.
There is clearly something
terrible occurring in some classes of our society that is unique to our
nation. It would behoove us to figure
out what it is and fix it.
There is yet
another aspect of aging to consider in addressing the appropriate retirement
age. The fact that we are, on average,
living longer is usually associated with the assumption that we are living
longer because we are healthier. That is
not necessarily true. Consider the
results obtained by Eileen
M. Crimmins and Hiram Beltran-Sanchez: Mortality and Morbidity Trends: Is There Compression of Morbidity? They
are asking whether or not people are living longer in a healthy condition. Their
paper appeared in 2011. Two of the
tables summarizing their data are reproduced below. There is much of interest here.
This chart looks at various measures of functional
mobility at all ages from surveys taken in 1998 and 2006. In all age groups the 2006 cohort reports
decreased mobility relative to the earlier group. It seems we are becoming feeble at an earlier
age.
This chart tallies the outcomes expected given the health
status reported by the 1998 and the 2006 groups. Included for consideration are the functional
mobility findings and the occurrence of cardiovascular disease, cancer, or
diabetes as a life threatening factor.
The general conclusion is that by 2006 the number of years one could
expect to live without one of those diseases was declining, and the number of
years one could expect to live with a major disease was increasing.
Another way of expressing these results is that as we
approach retirement age we are more likely to be feeble and unhealthy than were
the people in the same situation eight years earlier. In what universe does that suggest we should
by increasing the retirement age?
Our society seems to have some serious problems. Perhaps it is time to start worrying about
them. Things are getting worse not
better. We need to ask why.
At least a few people are beginning to take
notice. A few days ago an article
appeared on the Bloomberg website: Americans Are Retiring Later, Dying Sooner, and Sicker In-Between. This was motivated by a slight tick upward in the overall mortality rate.
The interested reader might find the following articles
to be of informative:
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