That figure is average life expectancy. IE 50% of US man are expected to reach 77.
A bit of history on why 65 was originally set as the retirement age.
The first country to set retirement at 65 was the Weimar Republic in Germany (1918-1933).
The reason 65 was chosen was that at that time only 5% (1 in 20) of the German population made it to 65. Retirement and the pension was a case of “You have worked hard all you life and will die soon, this is to let your final years be a bit easy”
Over the last century, in the west at least, over average lifespan has increased markedly and the quality of life for people of advanced age has also increased.
Many government now face the issue that they cannot afford to keep paying retirement benefits for two reasons:
1: Many many more people are reaching retirement age and they are living for decades more, rather than a few years.
2: With the decline in birthrates the ratio of working people to those in retirement has changed from about 10 to 1 to about 5 to 1 and is expected to get worse in the decades to come.
This does not answer your question but gives you an idea of the issues and hard decisions societies will have to face in the coming decades.
In the US, social security is a tax on poor people earning less than~$160k. That’s the bottom 90% of earners.
The top 10% of earners collect about half of the country’s personal income. Each of them does have to pay SS tax on the first $160k of earned income, but clearly there’s a huge pool of income that doesn’t pay into social security.
To that point SS is fully funded till about 2035 and then can pay out approx 75% of benefits after that. Removing that $160K cap would pretty much solve things.
That figure is average life expectancy. IE 50% of US man are expected to reach 77.
I can’t access the full paper that this is in reference too, so I’m not sure how they calculate it… but isn’t life expectancy usually the mean age of death? I would expect the distribution to have a left skew from people who die young, which should mean that more than 50% of US men are expected to reach 77.
To me mean = average, so the two statements are the same.
Are you talking about median age of death?
When child mortality was very high (pre- 20 century) that was definitely the case. I am not so sure that it is now. I feel that average life expectancy will be a lot closer to 50% survival rate (median age of death) than it was in the past.
To me mean = average, so the two statements are the same.
Are you talking about median age of death?
The median is the midpoint of a sample, not the mean. So, the median point represents the age where 50% of people will live to, the mean does not represent that (it’s often relatively close to the median assuming the data doesn’t have too much skew, but it can be way off).
When child mortality was very high (pre- 20 century) that was definitely the case. I am not so sure that it is now. I feel that average life expectancy will be a lot closer to 50% survival rate (median age of death) than it was in the past.
There are still plenty of people who die young, even though child mortality is less of a factor in wealthy countries right now. Plenty of people die in car accidents at a relatively young age, for instance. I’m sure the median and mean aren’t like 10 years off of each other, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re 3 or even 5 years off, which could be pretty significant in this context.
Well, the definition of the mean and median of a sample doesn’t depend on the particular data set, and there’s plenty of non-age related causes of death in the world which would logically skew the distribution to the left! You can look at actuarial tables to see this in action:
Male life expectancy at birth in this table is 74.12, but you’ll notice that you don’t get to 50% of the population dying until somewhere between the ages of 78 and 79.
This website has a pretty good chart showing the skew for a 2019 dataset:
That figure is average life expectancy. IE 50% of US man are expected to reach 77.
A bit of history on why 65 was originally set as the retirement age.
The first country to set retirement at 65 was the Weimar Republic in Germany (1918-1933).
The reason 65 was chosen was that at that time only 5% (1 in 20) of the German population made it to 65. Retirement and the pension was a case of “You have worked hard all you life and will die soon, this is to let your final years be a bit easy”
Over the last century, in the west at least, over average lifespan has increased markedly and the quality of life for people of advanced age has also increased.
Many government now face the issue that they cannot afford to keep paying retirement benefits for two reasons:
1: Many many more people are reaching retirement age and they are living for decades more, rather than a few years.
2: With the decline in birthrates the ratio of working people to those in retirement has changed from about 10 to 1 to about 5 to 1 and is expected to get worse in the decades to come.
This does not answer your question but gives you an idea of the issues and hard decisions societies will have to face in the coming decades.
deleted by creator
In the US, social security is a tax on poor people earning less than~$160k. That’s the bottom 90% of earners.
The top 10% of earners collect about half of the country’s personal income. Each of them does have to pay SS tax on the first $160k of earned income, but clearly there’s a huge pool of income that doesn’t pay into social security.
To that point SS is fully funded till about 2035 and then can pay out approx 75% of benefits after that. Removing that $160K cap would pretty much solve things.
But the rich don’t want to pay poor people’s retirement, that’s for the poor people to handle
deleted by creator
I can’t access the full paper that this is in reference too, so I’m not sure how they calculate it… but isn’t life expectancy usually the mean age of death? I would expect the distribution to have a left skew from people who die young, which should mean that more than 50% of US men are expected to reach 77.
To me mean = average, so the two statements are the same.
Are you talking about median age of death?
When child mortality was very high (pre- 20 century) that was definitely the case. I am not so sure that it is now. I feel that average life expectancy will be a lot closer to 50% survival rate (median age of death) than it was in the past.
The median is the midpoint of a sample, not the mean. So, the median point represents the age where 50% of people will live to, the mean does not represent that (it’s often relatively close to the median assuming the data doesn’t have too much skew, but it can be way off).
There are still plenty of people who die young, even though child mortality is less of a factor in wealthy countries right now. Plenty of people die in car accidents at a relatively young age, for instance. I’m sure the median and mean aren’t like 10 years off of each other, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re 3 or even 5 years off, which could be pretty significant in this context.
Well, both of us are making assumptions without doing the research.
So. I respect your opinion but neither of us knows that we are actually correct.
Well, the definition of the mean and median of a sample doesn’t depend on the particular data set, and there’s plenty of non-age related causes of death in the world which would logically skew the distribution to the left! You can look at actuarial tables to see this in action:
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
Male life expectancy at birth in this table is 74.12, but you’ll notice that you don’t get to 50% of the population dying until somewhere between the ages of 78 and 79.
This website has a pretty good chart showing the skew for a 2019 dataset: